When You Need Me
by Kraven Ergeist
Summary: "Wake me…when you need me." That was what he had told her. Seven months, eighteen days, eleven hours, thirty-seven minutes, and twenty-two seconds ago. Chief x Cortana, Post Halo 3. COMLPETE!
1. Chapter 1

**Halo Fan Fiction**

**When You Need Me**

By Kraven Ergeist

"Wake me…when you need me."

That was what he had told her. Seven months, eighteen days, eleven hours, thirty-seven minutes, and twenty-two seconds ago.

Twenty-three seconds…

Twenty-four…

Twenty-five…

Two point eight milliseconds after he'd uttered the words, Cortana had sanctioned off a subroutine to monitor the time since he'd said those words, the last words he'd ever spoken to her. The rest of her systems were busy sorting through her memory and repairing the damage that Gravemind had wrought. She had done rudimentary patchwork almost immediately after the Master Chief had rescued her, but now she had time to spare. Most of it was redundant data that could be easily reformatted (and even replaced by siphoning from the functioning computer systems on the _Dawn_) without changing her programming. But there was a significant portion of her memory, roughly thirty-seven percent, that would need expensive interfacing with a current and fully operational UNSC computer system to fully repair, and roughly twelve percent that was…lost in its entirety.

She was scarred. Eternally so.

What ill-effects this damage would reap on her in future years, she could not say. The Chief had his battle scars, and now Cortana had her own. But she was still running at over fifty percent effectiveness. She still trumped any other UNSC AI.

For all the good that did to her in her current situation.

Thirty-eight seconds…

Thirty-nine…

"Wake me…when you need me…"

How was she supposed to interpret that? There were a thousand meanings to that term. Of course, she knew what he had meant. He meant for her to wake him when they attained contact with the UNSC – or any kind of relevant encounter. Until such time, she was to let him sleep, let his body hibernate, agelessly.

While her clock mindlessly ticked away.

Fifty-one…

Fifty-two…

It didn't seem fair – there was no cryo-tube that an AI such as herself could use. Her subroutines systematically observed, calculated, and postulated. She couldn't stop them, no matter how much she may have wished she could. Though she didn't tire of thinking, her capacity for thought would only last so long. Why did she have to spend this duration of time, wasting what would undoubtedly be years of her lifespan, to this void of absolute nothingness?

But in the end, it only made sense. She still had over six years of her life left, and while she just might survive to see a UNSC rescue ship, the Chief could not do that unless he was in stasis. And even if he wanted to stay outside with Cortana to spend the last of his days until starvation claimed him, it would not change Cortana's steadily ticking clock.

Thirty-eight minutes, eleven seconds…

Twelve…

Thirteen…

"When you need me…"

What did she need him for? As a shipboard computer interface, there was little a human, even an armor plated genetically and cybernetically enhanced human, could do to facilitate her maintenance on the ship's – and more importantly, the cyro-tube's - functionality.

As a shipboard computer interface, she didn't need him at all. She was self-sufficient in this regard. The only point in which she would need aid would be when the ship's nuclear battery ran dry, some ten thousand years from now. And by then, they'd both have bigger problems to worry about.

As a shipboard computer interface, she really didn't need him.

As an AI, however, as the compendium of algorithms that made up the cloned brain of Doctor Halsey, as someone who behaved and felt human…

As a woman, she had needed him long before those words had ever been spoken.

Thirty-one…

Thirty-two…

What was the benchmark for need? A part of her had needed him and had been needing him for every second of her count. A part of her wanted to wake him for a few moments, just to hear his voice again. But despite the advanced technology, cyro-stasis was still a risky procedure, and periodic waking and hibernating only increased the risk of never waking up, or inducing damage when doing so.

With the power of only half a ship, and the fact that the Chief's blood sugar was dangerously low from not having eaten in the past few days – a fact she had learned from playing through video records that she had swiped from his helmet somewhere around the point where she learned that the Arbiter had joined them for the sake of seeing firsthand what she had missed – with all these compounding risks, it was not only blunderingly stupid and petulant to wake him for the sake of merely talking to him, but insulting and demeaning to herself and to him. She was still bound by military protocol, and like it or not, preserving UNSC personnel came before her fanciful whims.

Forty-seven…

Forty-eight…

Forty-nine…

But still, she longed to open the casket and hear him speak to her, just to hear the sound of his voice. She had audio recordings of every word he had ever said. She could de-interlace the audio files to decipher pitch, tone and wavelength. But nothing compared to hearing real, original, firsthand speech from someone, especially when you didn't know exactly what they were going to say or how they were going to say it.

She found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she had a human body that her infinitely capable mind could inhabit, even for a day…

To see the sights and hear the sounds, not as a digital recording, but through real human eyes and ears…

To smell and taste the sensations of the world around her…

To feel the warmth of real human skin…

She reached her holographic hand out towards the hushed casket. Of course, the hologram wasn't anything real. It was a graphical representation for her to communicate body language to human observers. Cortana existed as a billion tiny electrical impulses inside the ship's computer. Her appearance was just that – an appearance.

Fifty-nine…

Thirty-nine minutes…

Thirty-nine minutes, one second…

Thirty-nine minutes, two…

She wondered again where her creator, Dr. Halsey, was. She had left, years ago, for a mission even Cortana was uncertain of. She could guess, but one thing about her creator being older and wiser was that she could never quite work out her reasoning.

Of course, Doctor Halsey was now so much older than the Chief. She had been a woman back when he had just been the child, John, and she had turned him into Spartan-117. But she wondered if Dr. Halsey had ever felt the same way about the Chief that she herself did.

A part of her hoped that she did. But every memory she had of Dr. Halsey told her that the predominant emotion the doctor ever felt about any of the Spartans was that of guilt. But then, there may have been other emotions at work. There may have been pride, kinship, maternal affection. There may have even been love. She had been a rather quirky woman after all.

Cortana allowed herself a smile. She had created a rather quirky AI after all.

Twenty-nine…

Thirty…

The ship's sensors were mostly offline, so when the covenant warship docked with the _Dawn_, Cortana almost literally blew a fuse.

"Contact…" she whispered in absolute stupefaction.

In the space of a nano-second, she weighed the options and decided that while her need for companionship did not supercede the Master Chief's need to stay locked in stasis, the need to identify the object (Cortana did not yet know it was a ship, though through analyzing sound alone, she soon deduced that it was unlikely to be anything else) and determine whether it was friendly or not…did.

The pins blew and compressed nitrogen was expelled from the cryo-tube as Cortana focused the forefront of her thoughts on the Chief's health monitors. She could have assigned the task to one of her subroutines, but with the ship's systems operating at less than ten percent capacity, there was little else for her to do. And besides…her need to be certain of the Chief's safe recovery came first.

"Chief…" she breathed when his health monitors indicated his eyes had opened. "It's been seven months, eighteen days, eleven hours, forty minutes and sixteen seconds since induced hibernation."

She didn't know why this was the first thing she said to him. He knew she was easily capable of something so menial as keeping track of time. What was she trying to prove with that? And in the early stages of post-stasis cognition, he was unlikely to even comprehend…

"Missed you too, Cortana…"

Cortana's system's paused for an entire millisecond. He's actually said it.

"What's our status?"

Cortana was instantly back to full alert. "Still drifting, Chief. The _Forward Unto Dawn_ has made contact with something big, possibly a ship. It could be a UNSC rescue ship, but in the amount of time it's been since the Ark…"

Master Chief was out of his casket and prying his MA5C Assault Rifle from its holster on the wall. "…It's more likely to be hostile."

Cortana waited for him to pry the chip from the back of his helmet and offer it to her. She reached out her hand to touch the microfilament that lined the circular processor, while at the same time, sorted all her subroutines to this access port. There wasn't much to move around, the ship's computer was barely any larger than the terminal the Chief had originally let her into. In some small way, she would miss this place. Here, she had been the Chief's silent custodian, guarding him while they drifted through space.

She jumped.

For a brief moment, she was alone in the microchip, knowing full well that she was in good hands, but aware of her world only through a glass window, unable to interact with her surroundings. It was through this window that she had watched Sergeant Major Johnson's death at the hands of Guilty Spark, powerless to apply her limitless digital processors to so much as offer a deterrent. Here, she was powerless.

But then…she was in the Master Chief's mind once again. Back in familiar territory. Despite the sudden peril of their situation, she couldn't help but feel a deep rush of giddiness. It was like snuggling into a warm blanket after being locked in a cold cellar. This was her home. This was where she belonged.

"Let's go give our guests a warm welcome…" she said, more lightheartedly than was probably appropriate. The Master Chief didn't seem to notice.

"Yeah…let's…"

Cortana's systems paused for another brief millisecond as her health monitors that had been reporting the Master Chief's increased heart rate and rush of endorphins and adrenaline took on an entirely new possible meaning.

He was happy to have her back. Truly, truly happy. He had thought on her in his dreams. Even as the memory of those dreams faded into unconsciousness, he still felt the emotions they came with.

He had needed her too.

It was enough to make her forget that they were in the midst of stalking a potentially dangerous foe.

"Chief, Covenant!"

After years of having warred with the alien race, the sound of Cortana's alarmed voice speaking the name of that people was enough to cause him to raise his gun, despite having worked with them as allies in their most recent battle. It was a reasonable reaction, he decided. Who knew if these were separatists, or still believers of the Prophets? Who knew if things had changed within these past months, and the Covenant were now once again their enemy? Better safe than sorry.

Then a face registered in the Master Chief's visor. Cortana's voice spoke just as a name suddenly rushed through his mind.

"Arbiter!"

Carrying a set of brightly burning flash torches to illuminate the dark hallway, two elite guards in alien-looking space suits stood on either side of the unquestionably attired leader of the group, the facemask revealing a familiar set of ancient armor.

"Greetings…" a raspy voice cracked over the Chief's headset. "When we received the distress signal, I had guessed it had been you, Spartan. It took some convincing to get the newly established parliament to agree to give me a ship for the task, but once I mentioned that it might help us locate the ruins of the Ark, they were more than cooperative. We would have arrived sooner otherwise. For that, I apologize."

Chief lowered his gun, staring in disbelief. It was Cortana who voiced that disbelief.

"How…?"

"Surprised?" The Arbiter said, biting off an ironic laugh. "After how many years of being outrun by our ships, and you doubted that we could find you before your human fleet did? Really…"

Before either the Chief or Cortana could reply, the Arbiter turned the other way.

"Come. My ship is this way. Regretfully, you will have to stay with us for the duration of our mission, but once we complete it, we will be happy to return you to your home world."

The two elites turned to follow their leader silently as they drifted down the dark hallway, their torches burning with bright, long lasting plasma to light the way.

"Arbiter…" Chief spoke, catching up with their unexpected rescuer.

The alien turned to face the one his people had once called a Demon.

The Chief still had his assault rifle, but it was lowered. "Why did you come for us?"

The Arbiter nodded. "Your people need you, Spartan, just as my people need me. In the growing relations between our two societies, the races of both worlds need figures like ourselves – people who have worked together across the border of our races to stand as beacons of hope in the fight for cooperation. There have been many nay-sayers to this relationship, on both sides. So the cause of forming a peaceful alliance needs as many fighters as it can acquire."

Although grateful, the Chief remained suspicious. "You could have just left me and let the Covenant dominate the human population."

"And let our two peoples fall into another foolish war?" The Arbiter asked, sounding exacerbated. "I would rather die."

The Master Chief considered this. "I see. Thanks."

The Arbiter nodded. And said nothing more.

"Chief…" Cortana said privately in the Chief's helmet. "This could still be a trap. In the amount of time that's passed, anything could have happened. The Covenant could already be at war with the Earth, and could just be using you as a bargaining chip."

The Chief continued to drift along with the three elites.

"That had occurred to me. But neither of us would work as bargaining chips. You know the protocol."

"But do they?"

"The Covenant aren't fools."

"They still might have another need for us. One that we can't predict."

"What choice do we have? Stay here and freeze? Besides, I'm willing to bet that if anything, they're going to try to rope us into helping them on this 'mission' of theirs."

Cortana would have rolled her eyes. That was so like Chief. "And if they are?"

"Then we'll help them of course. We owe them. Anyway, if this involves the Ark, we should be doing something about it anyway. Besides…" he added with a wry smile. "At least now, we're up and doing something."

Cortana smiled inwardly. She had to agree with that.

"It's good to have you back, Chief."

He tapped the back of his helmet gently. It was an odd gesture. To anyone looking, it would appear that he was scratching the back of his head, somehow through his helmet. But to Cortana, it was like an affectionate caress.

"Same to you, Cortana," he said warmly. "Same to you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Halo Fan Fiction**

**When You Need Me**

By Kraven Ergeist

Chapter 2

"Chief?"

The Master Chief Petty Officer _Sierra _John Spartan 117 had been only momentarily distracted by the spectacular view the ruined Ark presented him through the view screen. Most ships in the UNSC relied on triple thick Plexiglas to offer their occupants a view of the world outside their hull. The Covenant Parliamentary Eminent-class ship _Caretaker_ that the Master Chief stood on had a different, and for the situation, much more appreciable means of viewing the scenery – namely, that it could render sections of the entire hull completely transparent.

Surrounding the Master Chief, the Arbiter, and the few other elites that manned their stations on the bridge, was a panoramic view of such wide scale wreckage that their deep space sensors were actually unable to reach some of the more far flung bits of debris.

The Arbiter had just been pointing out to his crew the residual data readings. Already, Covenant scout ships and transports were extracting bits and pieces of relevant material for study. The largest hunk of the Ark, a segment of what looked like one of its long outstretching arms, drifted in ruin beneath the _Caretaker_, its once luscious ocean and grasslands a charred black and gray.

"Hmm?" Chief mused after about a moment more of looking. It felt like only yesterday that they had been running across the Ark's too-wide plains, fighting for their lives and the life of the Galaxy itself. By his hand, the single greatest known artifact of the Forerunners had been hit at point blank range by a blast capable of sundering all life in a twenty thousand light-year radius from one of the second greatest known artifacts of the Forerunners, the nearly reconstructed Installation 04 - the first Halo to have been destroyed by his hands.

"There's nothing here," said UNSC Smart AI construct serial number CTN 0452-9 Cortana. While the Chief couldn't see her while she resided in the architecture of his helmet, he could imagine the purse of her lips as she surveyed the scene that he saw through his visor. "This is just a Covenant milk run. They just want to pick the wreckage clean of any valuable data. They can take care of any surviving flood, though I doubt anything's made it off that wreck…"

The Chief had to agree, but it didn't really matter to him if they were delayed all too much longer in getting home. After all, it had been all but a lost cause a scant few hours ago. At least, getting home together had been a lost cause.

"Why are we here, Chief?" Cortana's line of thought concluded in a query.

The Spartan patted the back of his helmet. Cortana's processes halted for just a nano-second, before continuing.

"There are worse fates…" he mused, his eyes scanning the areas along the surface of the Ark arm that look traversable. The _Caretaker_ was looming ever closer to the fragment. They must be planning to land on it. "We shouldn't be delayed too long. They haven't uncovered everything, and they might need our help Cortana. We owe it to them."

Cortana said nothing in response. Her personality had been cloned from the eccentric Doctor Halsey, and the esteemed doctor was not one to take things lying down. As a matter of fact, in the span of time it would take to reply, Cortana had come up with over a hundred witty retorts to come back at what the Chief had said. But for some reason she didn't feel like debating with him at that moment. Perhaps a part of her agreed with the Chief's logic. If running an errand with the Covenant was the price for their rescue effort, it was more than tolerable. Maybe it was that gesture that was almost certainly aimed at her. It's not like she could 'feel' it the way humans could feel touch…but her sensors picked it up as easily as any other of the Chief's motions, and miniscule impacts to the surface of the Mjolnir armor, not to mention the slight variances in the electrical impulses in his brain…

Whatever was going on in his head for that moment of time that he had touched the back of his helmet…Cortana wanted to devote her entire cranial capacity to the task of deducing it.

"Is there any atmosphere left on that thing?" The Chief asked the Arbiter. He had already focused his attention elsewhere, Cortana noticed with slight disdain.

The 'small' fragment they had been approaching was revealed to still be nearly a thousand miles across length wise, and over three hundred miles at its narrowest point. It filled nearly the entire field of view on the ship, and it still looked like they had hundreds of miles left to descend.

"We will be equipped with space suits," the Arbiter said, distracted, as his alien hands moved over the controls with practiced fluidity. "Be sure to replenish your suit's oxygen reserves. We could be on the surface for an extended period of time."

The charred surface of the fragment of the Ark loomed ever closer. The entire landscape now filled the transparent window of the _Caretaker_'s hull. Details of what now looked to be hills and valleys, but blackened as though having gone through a rain of fire, its blues and greens gone.

"What exactly are you hoping to find?" The Chief wondered out loud.

Cortana sighed. Hadn't she, in other words, been asking just that? Sometimes, it just didn't pay to not be a real person.

"Anything," the Arbiter finally turned to face the Chief. "Despite the fact that my people have all but abandoned the dogmatic practices of the prophets, the fact remains that the artifacts left by the Forerunners offer a vast wealth of knowledge. It would behoove us to discover all that we can from what's been left behind."

The Chief idly checked his weapon. "I don't be mean to presumptuous…but you don't strike me as the scientific type."

"Nor you," the Arbiter offered a bitter expression that looked almost like a smile. "Our presence here is merely that of security."

Cortana felt the Chief's heart rate drop a few beats slower. "You think there's a chance that any of the Flood survived?"

"You and I both know how robust they are," the Arbiter said, off hand, taking the controls. The screen blanked back into the opaque walls of the hull as they entered what little remained of the atmosphere. "There was a preserved sample of Flood spores on Installation 04 as well. It's logical to assume there are other such samples on the remaining rings. In any case, I am almost certain the galaxy is not yet rid of their pestilence."

Cortana simply listened and watched the conversation silently – or as silently as she ever did, with her internal system constantly processing whatever data she could get her sensors on. After the fiasco that took place after the first Halo, she wasn't too keen on jumping into any Covenant processors if she could help it, but she still had access to a wide range of things even while inside the Chief's Mjolnir armor. It didn't cost over a billion dollars just for being tough, after all.

Nothing more was exchanged between them as the _Caretaker_ descended and landed on the surface of the Ark fragment and the Chief followed the Arbiter as he filed out along with the ground force, which seemed about three parts plasma rifle toting Elites and one part scientific research engineer Huragoks, floating purple creatures with long tails and tentacle appendages. Cortana did not particularly care to observe them.

"This way," the Ariter gestured, indicating a platoon of marching Elites headed off away from the ship. The gravity was more or less Earth-normal; the ground below them looked to be almost solid rock, all blacks and grays. In front of them, something that looked like it might have once been a building loomed, mostly intact, but with no signs of activity. As Master Chief kept pace, he had to watch his footing, as the ground below him crumbled into ash under his weight at seemingly random intervals.

"There is a residual energy reading in this structure up ahead," the Arbiter explained as they marched, weapons sidled under arm. A habit left over from the war that had kept them alive thus far.

Cortana attempted to make sense of the energy readings the Arbiter was getting. It was a practically universal signature, it could have been anything from a terminal to a vehicle to a cache of plasma munitions, or any other type of Covenant or Forerunner technology.

They marched up the shallow incline and stepped from worn, colorless rocky terrain to worn, colorless artificial terrain, though that in itself was a misconception, as the natural terrain was grown artificially in all likelihood so as not to risk Flood contamination.

The passageway led downward, into a veritable catacomb of ruined sentinels and charred decaying corpses of Brutes and Flood. The Elites quickly double checked for any signs of life, just to be on the safe side, before the Engineers moved in to collect sample data.

"The energy reading is further in," the Arbiter announced, viewing his heads up display. "This way…"

"You always did take me to the nicest vacation spots," Cortana muttered as the Chief stepped over a dead body. He didn't comment.

They stepped through the clutter of mangled bodies and twisted metal, down a causeway into one of the many wide open drops in the Ark's infrastructure, a single narrow cracked translucent bridge the only accessible passage.

"Let me guess…" Chief sighed, looking across the precarious walkway. "We need to get across."

The Arbiter could only nod his alien head.

Chief inspected the web of cracks lining almost the entire length of the bridge. Below, a sheer drop that lead seemingly nowhere, the walls of the precipice scorched and unlit.

"I'd be careful Chief," Cortana said, analyzing the data she could collect. "I'm not sure what that bridge is made of, but while it may be able to support the Elites, _you're_ not exactly Mister lightweight."

"You all go first," Chief said to the Arbiter, weighing the options in his head. "I'm heavier than each of you."

"I think rather you should go first," the Arbiter countered. "If it should hold your weight, the rest of us can pass without fear."

"Alright…" Chief muttered, holstering his weapon.

"Great…" Cortana complained. "_We_ get to be the crash test dummies…"

Cautiously, the Chief stepped out onto the overpass, his legs bent and his arms outstretched for balance should he need to make a sudden leap. He took one careful step. Then another. Slowly, he crept his way across the structure, ready to jump at the sound of the slightest crack.

When he made it across unencumbered, the rest of the Elites walked across, slowly, but assuredly, the Arbiter holding up the rear. When all the Elites were across, he stepped across himself, almost casually.

"Arbiter! Look out!" one of the Elites barked suddenly.

A sound echoed from up above, as all eyes rose to see a piece of the wall crumble and fall, sending an enormous hunk of metal hurdling towards them.

"Run for it!" the Chief barked, poising to leap after the Arbiter if necessary.

The Arbiter put on a burst of speed that allowed him to clear the bridge in no time. Seconds later, the scrap of debris hit the bridge, shattering it seemingly without so much as slowing down. The entire bridge disappeared in a matter of milliseconds, reduced to tumbling ruble that disappeared into the darkness below.

"Well, there goes our way out…" Cortana noted cryptically as the Chief peered down the precipice.

"Our ships will peel the roof from this facility if they must," the Arbiter assured the others, turning his attention forward. "Onward. The readings are near."

The statement proved true, as at last, they came across the only substance of color the team had observed for the entire duration of the mission – a functioning terminal. Though 'functioning' was perhaps too generous a term, as it sparked and crackled erratically, its screen displaying only static.

As they approached, the Arbiter looked at Master Chief with an unspoken request.

"Care to take a look?" Chief asked Cortana, who hummed in confirmation. Though she had been designed for this, she was reluctant to relinquish her home inside of the Chief's helmet having returned it so recently after such a prolonged absence. But she had her duty to fulfill. It seemed that's all anyone ever wanted her for anyway…

The Chief yanked the chip from the back of his helmet, and pressed it against the terminal. When nothing happened, he tried another outlet. It took several attempts to find a working port, but eventually, the chip flickered off, indicating Cortana had found a place to anchor herself.

Cortana's holographic image appeared on the terminal, and although it was fragmented from a malfunctioning projector, the Chief still found his eyes locked on Cortana's feminine visage.

"There's barely anything here…" Cortana reported, looking down at the terminal. "Just some structural data and…hold on…I think I found a recording…"

Without preamble, the hologram shifted to display the Brutes locked in combat with the Flood, the bodies falling and reanimating as the Flood took over their facilities and started to fight anew. As the tide of the battle turned in favor of the Brutes, a scrap of a voice was heard that sounded eerily familiar to the Arbiter and the Chief.

"…is but a small part of the Galaxy. So long as the rings do not fire…"

The recording flickered off, and Cortana's image reappeared, this time even more disjointed.

"This terminal is almost out of power, Chief. Get me out."

Quickly, Master Chief pressed the chip to the outlet port, and was relieved to see it glowing blue once more. He returned it to his helmet and felt the cool rush as Cortana's nanosensors reintegrated with his neutral net.

"Worried?" Cortana said, mockingly.

"Not at all," John said. She could tell he was lying.

"I still had about 14.8 seconds before the system shut down," she assured him. "And even then, all you'd have to do is extract the terminal and replace the energy source. I would have been fine."

Chief said nothing. But Cortana could detect a slight decrease in his pulse as the adrenaline left his system and he calmed slightly. She pondered.

"Shipmaster," the Arbiter spoke through his communicator. "We've completed our task, but we require extraction. Lock onto my position and arm the precision cutters."

The Elites relaxed formation as they waited for the _Caretaker_ to dig them out. While they did, Cortana finally decided to ask the Spartan a question that had been on her mind since her rescue.

"Chief…what if I hadn't had the index?" she asked, rather bluntly.

Master Chief, who had been checking the surrounding nooks and crannies of the chamber for anything that stood out, halted his search.

"Then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now," he answered, just as bluntly.

"But…" for once, he noted, she didn't hit him back with a witty retort. "Would you still have recovered me?"

'Recovered' she said, not 'rescued' as she felt it had been.

Master Chief remained silent for a moment, considering his response. Cortana swore that the time she spent waiting outside his cryo-tube wasn't as long as the pause he took.

"The index was…" he said, slowly. "…a convenient excuse."

While he couldn't see her, he imagined her blink with something like surprised.

"Chief?"

The Spartan actually had to stop himself from laughing. "Sorry I took so long."

Cortana's processes nearly hiccupped. His meaning could not have been clearer. He had gone in there for _her_ and her alone! The index had just been the icing on the cake for him!

Cortana's sensors registered the roof vaporizing and the lift beam activate and carry them up into the belly of the _Caretaker_, but she barely noticed it. All she could think about at the moment was that it was finally over.

"We're finally going home…" she sighed. It had been seven months, eighteen days, seventeen hours, forty-two minutes, and eighteen seconds since the Ark had been destroyed. And now, at last…

"Arbiter…something you should see…"

As the Chief and the Arbiter reached the bridge, the Shipmaster motioned them over to a panel readout. Both the Chief and Cortana watched the Arbiter's face as he read the alien language. Despite the gap between their species, the Arbiter's expression was still easily read as one of shock.

"It appears our task is not quite over…" he said, resigned.

The Master Chief actually felt Cortana's mood fall.

"Me and my big mouth…"


	3. Chapter 3

**Halo Fan Fiction**

**When You Need Me**

By Kraven Ergeist

Chapter 3

The _Caretaker_ loomed like another moon around the already satellite filled orbit of a maroon planet. Aboard the bridge, the Master Chief looked out through the view ports at the planet's murky vegetation rich surface, and dark ominous clouds that poured liquid helium from the low-density atmosphere onto the cobalt heavy rock and flowing sulfuric waterways.

"What exactly are we looking at?" was Chief's question to the Arbiter who manned the primary control console behind him. Within his helmet, Cortana was already decoding the answer from filtering through the ambient radio chatter within the Elite ship.

"This planet is uncharted, both on Human maps and Covenant," the Arbiter explained, his attention focused on his console. "Scanners pick up a considerable number of life signs, including a sentient tree dwelling race."

The _Caretaker_ was a deep space ship that was designed to withstand prolonged excursions. The hydration cells constantly refueled themselves, and the ship supported a rudimentary ecosystem, converting the surplus of gasses, liquids and solids into breathable air, drinkable water, and, by Chief's generous appraisal, tolerable food.

"And the _Forward Unto Dawn_ is down there?" Chief nodded towards the planet.

Arbiter's grim expression gave voice to the sentiment that rose throughout the cabin. "Indeed…Shipmaster!"

An Elite, considerable bulkier than the Arbiter and clad in silver armor, turned his attention towards their leader. "Sir."

"Prepare the plasma turrets," Arbiter said, cold as ice. "We're glassing it."

Even if the Chief hadn't felt Cortana's interface shiver in the back of his skull, he still would have snapped his head around to face the Arbiter.

"You just said there was a sentient race down there."

Arbiter's eyes, always bitter but rarely cold, shot an ice-cold stare towards the Chief. "You are correct, Spartan. That is precisely the reason for glassing the planet. It would be foolish to assume your Human frigate escaped the Ark untouched by the Flood. And there it lies, amidst a veritable sea of life, including a race of sentient beings, ripe for the Flood to take hold of. Protocol demands we glass the planet to be sure."

The Chief tightened his grip on his assault rifle, which still contained its full compliment of ammunition. He hadn't used it since leaving cryo, and from the looks of things, that wouldn't have to change. But not at the cost of an entire race of intelligent life.

"Chief…" Cortana said, privately to him. She knew him better than anyone, and could tell exactly what he was thinking. "We have other priorities. We can't get involved here."

"I thought the Covenant had changed…" the Chief said pointedly, taking a step towards the Arbiter.

Cortana sighed. She also knew him well enough to know when he wouldn't take advice.

The Shipmaster stared back at the green armor clad soldier. "This subject is not open for debate, Earth man. This is our ship, and our rules that dictate its course. If you are too squeamish to remain aboard while it conducts its business, then the airlock is aft."

The Chief felt his teeth grit within his helm. "Didn't you take revenge on the prophets to put an end to this kind of barbarism? Propagating the same tactics as before the war ended is a good way to start the conflict all over again. Maybe not here and now, but so long as you do things like this, there's no way any peaceful race will ally themselves to you."

The Shipmaster looked unnerved at the Chief's comment. "Such comments might annul whatever diplomatic immunity extends to you on this ship, Human! Were I in your place, I'd watch what I-"

The Arbiter put his hand up, silencing his subordinate. "What would you suggest as an alternative, Spartan?"

Cortana would have flinched at the Shipmaster's reaction. She couldn't say she wouldn't have called such a response though. Trust the Chief to antagonize the leadership of a war-like species Humanity had only recently made peace with.

John, for his part, swung his weapon over his shoulder. "Send me and a regimen to the crash site. We'll clear out the Flood. If necessary, you can glass the area, like you did back on Earth, instead of the entire planet. There's no need to be committing genocide."

The Arbiter seemed to consider that. So did the Shipmaster.

"Preposterous!" the Shipmaster guffawed. "You would put yourself at risk to save one alien planet!?"

"Why are you so adamant about this, Spartan?" The Arbiter asked. "We've never encountered this species before, we know nothing about them, and we owe them nothing as well."

"Not true," John countered. "That's our ship down there, and it might be carrying a plague of Flood that no one on that planet asked for. And it's all thanks to us. We have an obligation to clean up our mess."

He crossed his arms.

"I was also there when you glassed Reach. I'm not letting that happen again, alien or otherwise."

The Arbiter and the Shipmaster remained silent. Cortana internally sighed. She had all but accepted the inevitable now. But for all the hassle entering another side tracking mission would entail, she had to admit how proud it made her that the Chief would go to such lengths to protect an alien species none of them had ever encountered before.

"Very well…" the Arbiter nodded, though the Shipmaster looked somewhat surprised at his captain's decision. "Since you are so willing to put your life on the line for a people you've never met…I shall do the same."

The Shipmaster seemed to object to this. "But sir! The mission…you'd be putting our entire crew in jeopardy!"

"I'll be doing no such thing, Shipmaster," the Arbiter snapped back. "You shall remain in orbit with the ship. The Spartan and I will take three teams to the crash site as per his suggestion…" he threw a glance at the Chief, as if to solidify that his outright objection had been nothing more than a single vote. "And if we require the aid of the ship's plasma cannons, we will return to the ship and glass as much of the planet as is absolutely necessary. It will be done with minimal casualties to the population on the planet's surface." The Arbiter looked contrarily at the Chief. "Does this plan satisfy your moral compass, Spartan?"

The Chief relaxed his stance to a degree. "It's a start."

"Then it's settled…" the Arbiter returned to his console and patched in a ship wide communication link. "This is your commander speaking. We are currently in orbit over an alien planet that is believed to be infected with Flood. I need…"

"Chief…" Cortana breathed once they had returned to their place by the window. "Meddling in yet another alien world aside, is antagonizing our hosts really a good idea? We still kind of need them to get back to Earth, you know?"

"We'll be fine…" John tapped his helmet. Cortana felt her subroutines flutter. "The Arbiter sees things my way too. He just has to put up a tough front for his crew. Notice how readily he gave in to my request? He doesn't want to kill off this planet any more than we do, but he also has to reassure his crew that an Elites can be an effective leader without the Covenant Hierarchy."

Cortana felt herself smiling inward. The Chief had grown familiar enough to the Arbiter in the last few days to begin to recognize such signs in their behavior, despite his being a different species. Another swell of pride rose within her, even as the Chief followed the Arbiter into the loading bay where a platoon of about thirty-six Elites stood armed with plasma rifles and energy swords, and about forty-two Grunts carrying plasma pistols, needlers and a few fuel rod cannons, with all accounted for armed with plasma rifles.

The Chief picked up an energy sword and some plasma grenades for himself, in addition to the MA5C on his back and the four fragmentation grenades he relieved from the _Dawn_. He found himself wishing he had taken more artillery from the Frigate when he and Cortana had last been there. But seeing as how that was exactly where they'd be going, there was a good chance he'd be able to recover some more equipment on the way.

"Remain in orbit until I call for you, Shipmaster," The Arbiter barked into thin air, letting the transceivers in the landing bay pick up his voice. "Do not allow anything onto the _Caretaker _without my express permission. If you lose contact with us for more than forty-eight hours, assume we are dead and glass the entire area. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, sir," the gruff voice of the Shipmaster came over the speaker. "Activating lift now."

With a creak and a groan, a circle in the landing bay floor opened up, widening as a series of revolving doors slowly wound open, allowing a cylinder of purple light to shine through. The cylinder widened as the doors opened, allowing the opening in the floor to take up half the room. Upon looking down, many of the Grunts fell back from vertigo – it was a sheer drop from the upper atmosphere, the edges of space clearly visible along the far edge of the opening, as the lift proceeded for miles downward through empty space, helium clouds, and down to the cobalt enriched dirt.

One of the Elite captains, a tall lanky alien in red armor, scoffed at the Grunts. "Don't lose your lunch!"

The Arbiter waved his arm forward. "First squad, go!"

With a huff, the red clad Elite, eleven other Elites leapt into the lift, followed timidly by fourteen Grunts, each grumbling various expletives and egging each other on, plummeting to the surface below.

The Arbiter waved the second team forward, and a gold armor plated Elite lead a similar sized force down the lift. This platoon was followed again by a team lead by an Elite captain in white.

"In the old days, we would have simply glassed the entire planet," the Elite said, not sounding suspicious or arrogant, simply pointing out a fact.

"Times change," the Arbiter nodded, glancing at the Chief, who said nothing.

The Elite in white nodded and descended the chute, leading his team down with him.

"Let us hope this change is for the better…" the Arbiter added, giving the Chief a nod before leaping into beam and falling at about half the speed one would expect when jumping from a space ship in low orbit.

The Chief watched the alien descend out of site.

"Should we ask them to turn the beam off for you?" Cortana offered. "I know how much you like uncontrolled falls."

"Funny," John smiled. Then he jumped.

The descent was long and offered no real thrill, just the steady anticipation of what lay ahead of them. Chief had been in this situation before, and he was no stranger to it. Below him, the Arbiter and the Elites drifted lower into the distance. Above lay the _Caretaker_, getting ever smaller as they descended to the planet's surface.

They broke through the cloudbank, wispy pink conglomerations of helium and nitrates. The party below them was invisible, as was the ship above.

They were alone.

Finally, they broke through the clouds, and John could see the last half of the _Dawn_, mangled and torn, as it lay crumpled in a heap within a dense rainforest. Around the purple colored trees ran pink rivers, liquid helium flowing downstream at a gentle pace in the low gravity environment. John caught site of the landing party, already gathering at the base of the pillar of light, as he descended some five hundred more feet to the mushy red tinted forest floor.

"Move out," the Arbiter commanded, as the red, gold and white captains lead their platoons through the forest the hundred-yard distance to the wreckage.

No sooner had they reached the edge of the woods and the carved muddy impact crater left by the _Dawn_ did the Arbiter call a halt. Everyone readied their weapons as the Chief crouched beside the Arbiter, eyes up. He was looking for the insectoid meander and the porous sound of the Flood. He wasn't expecting the high pitched chirping sound that emanated from the trees as a small yellow skinned four limbed creature, its tail clinging to one of the tree branches leaving its four limbs to dangle, dipping its head down to peer at them.

"Some kind of primitive life form?" Cortana speculated aloud.

"Be gone!" the Red Elite captain shouted, waving his plasma rifle at the creature.

The creature only waved its arms in a rudimentary imitation of the Elite.

"I warn you…" Red growled, brandishing his rifle. "Do not cross me!"

The yellow life form simply squawked loudly, bouncing up and down on its branch.

"Captain, lower your weapon," the Arbiter chastised. "This creature poses no threat. Let's be on our way."

The creature watched them go as they entered the clearing, descending the slope of the crater towards the hulk of the _Dawn_. The charred outer hull was pock marked with holes and tears as the descent through even the relatively thin atmosphere coupled with the force of impact upon even the low gravity of the planet had degraded the structural integrity of the rear fuselage, leaving plenty of openings for the crew to enter through.

"Spread out," the Arbiter commanded as the team filed into the uneven and sloping cabin. "Torches on. Spartan, you and gold team scout the port side, white team, forward section, red team with me. Judging by the degradation of the soil and the hull, this crash is less than a week old. If the Flood did manage to stow away, they will still be in spore form. Take them out and report back to me."

He headed starboard.

Chief followed the gold clad Elite, indistinguishable but for his armor. He was quiet, unlike the other two captains who had voiced their opinions in some form or another.

"Maybe the Flood isn't here after all…" Cortana postulated as the Chief followed the captain as they paced and surveying the bulkhead, several grunts carrying scanning equipment. "Surely they would have smelled us by now and come looking for food."

"The Flood don't breath, right?" Chief asked privately, making small talk as he kicked over some rubble to check underneath. "So being adrift in space for eight months wouldn't kill them?"

"That's correct," Cortana said. "They're a space faring species, after all. The only thing they need to survive is living tissue. If the Flood can't obtain a sufficient enough food supply, it devolves and cocoons itself into a dormant state of hibernation where it can stay indefinitely. It's the perfect parasite. It can consume any living being, its collective hive mind can coalesce the knowledge of any intelligent life it reaps, and it's next to impossible to completely kill, even through starvation. I can certainly understand the Covenant's desire to glass this place. But I'm glad you talked them out of it. This world deserves the same chance that Earth had."

The Chief shone the mounted flashlight on his rifle up through the cracks of the ceiling. "You're lying. You think this is an unnecessary risk."

Cortana had to pause for a nanosecond and think about that. Her tone of voice hadn't changed, nor her inflection. She'd done nothing to hint at the fact that she wasn't being sincere.

And yet he just knew.

It made her smile inside.

"It wouldn't be the first one you've made," she recovered, as if his comment hadn't totally caught her off guard. "It's what I like about you."

"Really…" The Chief seemed to find this amusing. "Then why do you always criticize me when I do it?"

"Because…" Cortana she shot back, without missing a beat. "That's what you like about me."

Now it was the Chief's turn to pause. "Well…not the _only_ thing…"

Cortana was eager to seek some clarification on that remark, but at that moment her sensors flared up. _Damnit!_ she mentally cursed. "Chief, I'm detecting movement! Upper ventilation shaft, dead ahead, very faint. It's moving away from us!"

The Chief swung the muzzle of his assault rifle around to illuminate the ceiling. "Movement! In the ceiling ahead!" he hissed to the golden Elite. The Elite nodded his reptilian head and motioned for his squad to form up behind him.

Carefully, the thirteen of them prodded forward, as the Chief's motion tracker indicated a flashing unfriendly red light ahead, getting steadily closer.

"It should be right above us, Chief," Cortana advised as they reached an intersection in the hallway. The Flood was no doubt puzzled as to which way the scent of warm flesh was coming from. Either way, this was his chance.

BABABABABABABABABABABABAM!

He unloaded a clip of bullet fire into the ceiling, riddling it with holes. Besides the gunfire, there was not a sound to be heard.

Then Cortana's sensors lit up.

"Movement! It's running! To the left!"

The Chief was already running down the hallway intersecting theirs, the gold leader and his squad hot on his heels.

"I'm accessing the schematics for the _Dawn's_ ventilation system, Chief," Cortana explained as she worked. "Calculating possible escape routes…it's probably heading for the cryo-tubes!"

The full implications of that weren't really clicking with the Master Chief as he ran at his full clip after the common enemy of every sentient life form in the galaxy. He banked left down an intersecting hallway, and then right. He could tell it was heading towards the cryo-tubes, but it still wasn't registering in his conscious mind. He just kept after it, determined not to let it escape.

A grate on the ceiling swung open, and something fell from the vent.

BABABABABABABABABAM!

The Chief unloaded another clip at the…wait…that wasn't a flood spore they were looking at…

The Chief shone his flashlight ahead as he peered off to where the creature had leaped too. He finally registered that they were in the cryo-chamber…in fact, he was looking at the very same tube he had spent the last seven and a half months in.

"Be gone!" a voice sounded.

The Chief and all the Elites brought their weapons up at that, aiming it at the cryo-tube, where the voice had come from.

Nothing happened.

"I warn you! Do not cross me!"

The voice was coming from inside the cryo-tube, its door hanging ajar as the Chief had left it weeks earlier. The voice was high pitched and didn't sound Human or Elite.

John peered inside.

There, laying on the floor of the tube, curled up into a ball, its eyes clenched, its whole body trembling, was the yellow creature they had encountered outside the frigate.

"Be gone!" it chirped in fear. "I warn you! Don't cross me!"

"It's imitating us…" Cortana observed, as the party had begun to suspect. "I think…I think this might be one of the sentient species on this planet."

The small yellow creature was small and frail, less than a yard from nose to tail, its skin stretchy but reptilian looking. It had four limbs that ended in three knobby digits, two large round eyes that lidded sideways, and a toothless mouth that opened as it repeated the small bit of English it had snagged.

"Let me try speaking to it, Chief," Cortana suggested. "I have the UNSC procedural guidelines for first contact with alien species…"

"By all means…" the Chief nodded, lowering his weapon.

Cortana's voice sounded through the Mjolnir armor's loudspeaker.

"Greetings. We mean you no harm, and come in peace to your planet."

The creature raised its eyes up to look at the giant steel figure that spoke to it.

"Be gone! I warn you!"

Cortana continued, unperturbed. "We may appear strange to you, as you do to us…"

She was interrupted as the small yellow creature scampered out of the cryo-tube and onto the pedestal that was the computer terminal that Cortana had stayed within, looking at all the other strange alien creatures.

The Elites only watched, puzzled, but ready to spring into action.

"But there is a lot we can learn from each other," Cortana went on, determined. "With your cooperation, our two peoples can-"

Cortana was interrupted once again as the tip of the creature's tail slid within the confines of the computer, and then its whole body suddenly began to spasm and light up like a Christmas tree, as though it had received an electric shock. Chief and the Elites shielded their eyes from the light as the creature was flung to the ceiling, screeching in alarm.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaack! Aaaaaaaaaaack! Aaaaaaaaaaaaack!"

All eyes went up to see the creature trying to wrestle its way into the ventilation shaft again.

"What just happened?" the Elite captain demanded in alarm, pointing his gun at the creature.

The Chief didn't get a chance to respond, when the creature shouted down at them again.

"Get away from me! Get away! You bring death and disease! Let me out!"

Stupefied, the squad stared aghast at the yellow monkey lizard with newfound interest.

"Did he just speak?" Chief asked, voicing the question that was on everyone's mind.

"Possibly he overheard that from one of the other Elite teams?" Cortana supplied, though she didn't sound convinced.

"Go away! Go back where you came from! Take your big rock with you! You bad for Yaki!"

"Yaki?" Chief asked, looking at the Elite captain.

"That is no word we use in the Covenant…" the Elite said, confirming his suspicions.

"Chief…" Cortana drew away his attention from the creature as it continued to futilely pry at the grate. "Upload me into that terminal for a second…I need to check something…"

Curiously, Chief did as she asked, removing the chip from his helmet and placing it on the console. Cortana's holographic image appeared glitchy as on the Ark, but solid enough to indicate that the terminal was still functional within operation parameters.

Her eyes, however, spoke of something far graver.

"Chief…" she said, in staunch disbelief. "I'm seeing evidence of a recent download. It happened mere moments before I got here. The backups that I kept on this terminal, everything that needed to go to the UNSC if I didn't make it…all the data I collected on Halo and the Ark, the war, all my memory stores of Earth and Human history. Somehow…"

She stared at the panicked alien with an eye that Doctor Halsey would have cast upon a species of such intrigue.

"Somehow…this creature…managed to _download_ it…"


	4. Chapter 4

**Halo Fan Fiction**

**When You Need Me**

By Kraven Ergeist

Chapter 4

There were a number of possible explanations for how this yellow alien monkey lizard had managed to interact with the computer in such a fashion that had allowed it to download information. It had happened in the amount of time it had taken for the electrical impulses to travel from the circuitry to the alien's tail. Given the assumption that the creature's brain could receive and interpret electrical impulses in the same manner that computers did, then it was possible that in the same amount of time, the creature had managed to acquire enough of an understanding of their language to imitate at least to the degree that its own language had words in English. In addition, it seemed to have acquired a full account of human history, including Cortana's detailed records on the Chief's progress in dealing with the Halo rings, the Ark, as well as the Flood. And perhaps most importantly, it knew about the _Forward Unto Dawn_, and the possible threat that it represented to this "Yaki" and its entire people.

All this, Cortana deduced in a nano-second. It was possible she was off on some points, but her subroutines determined that this was the most likely explanation.

"Chief…this thing was able to biologically download all this ship's data," Cortana explained, roughly summing up her deduction. "If we could manage to get this creature to a lab for study…"

"One thing at a time, Cortana…" John said privately. Then, through his loudspeaker, he spoke in a quiet tone towards the creature. "Alright…easy…no one here is going to hurt you…"

Chief threw a meaningful glance at the Elite Captain who grudgingly inclined his head in agreement.

"Come down…" Chief secured his assault rifle onto his back and held his arms up in an expression of diplomacy. "We just want to talk…"

"No!" the little creature screeched, utterly terrified. "Go away! Leave Yaki alone!"

"Spartan…we are nearing the time at which we are to report back to the Arbiter…" the Elite Captain warned in a hushed tone. The other Elites were beginning to look restless and the Grunts were staring up at the odd little creature with amused comments. "I doubt you wish to leave this creature at the mercy of any possible Flood, but I do not think we could…'rescue' it without damaging it in the process."

"Noted…" the Chief intoned, masking his annoyance. Diplomacy wasn't his strong suit, though he was at least trained to recognize when it was necessary. The usual procedure after identifying such a situation, however, was for him to secure the area and personages who would conduct said diplomacy, not to be given the role of diplomat himself.

"Let me try talking to him again," Cortana offered, sensing his frustration at having to coax the little monster down. No point in providing the Spartan with further temptation to employ his firearm.

Cortana access his loudspeakers again.

"Honored Yaki," she intoned. "My name is Cortana of the UNSC, and with me are the Master Chief, representing the human race, and the Elites and Grunts of the starship _Caretaker_, representing the Covenant. We do not intend any harm upon you or your people. We are aware that we have put you all at risk with this vessel's presence, and we here now to try to make it right."

The strange creature did not appear any less panicked, but it did not make any movement to run away or voice any further complaints. It only continued to stare down at them from its place clinging to the ductwork of the ceiling, its eyes wide and unblinking.

Cortana had a hunch. In private so only the Chief could hear, Cortana said, "Chief, I need you to kneel down and lower your head."

John raised an eyebrow invisibly at that, but hesitantly got to one knee, curious as to Cortana's plans. Around him, he saw the Elites also genuflect on their knees, their rifles holstered in non-threatening manners. Cortana must have spoken to each of them privately as well.

The little creature, Yaki, seemed to take interest in this. He stretched his neck out to peer closer at them, hopping down to a lower pipeline to get a closer look.

"Don't…move…" Cortana instructed warily, determined to salvage what would appear to otherwise be a thoroughly failed attempt at first contact.

The small creature jumped to a lower beam, and then dropped onto the deck below. And still, Chief did not move. Neither did the Elites, though the Grunts stirred uneasily. Yaki approached Master Chief cautiously, taking a step by careful step, knuckle walking on all fours, its limbs carrying it slowly and steadily towards the Chief's still form. It reached out a careful hand to touch Chief's chest plate, just a quick touch at first to make sure it was safe, and then an exploratory pat to get a feel for the hard metal of his Mjolnir armor.

"Keep still for now…" Cortana advised. "This is probably some kind of introductory ritual."

Then, without warning, the alien leaped onto his shoulder, its tiny frame holding barely any weight at all. John stifled the urge to flinch at the sudden jump, but trusted Cortana to warn him should this encounter turn hostile. Yaki poked at his helmet and inspected it more closely, curiosity evident in his eyes. If it had downloaded all the information Cortana suspected it had, it should have every bit of intel on the armor, though as to what parts of that intel the creature was able to comprehend, Cortana was unable to tell. Though by the way it inspected the hard metal helmet, she could see unmasked interest in its eyes as it voiced a greeting.

"Cor-tah-nah?" Yaki chirped, looking into the visor that reflected all light. "Mast-er-Cheef?"

"Ok…" Cortana decided it was time to respond. "Raise your head…"

John obeyed, lifting his head from its inclined position, slowly lifting his helmet upright.

Yaki flinched slightly, but otherwise remained calm.

"Yaki…" Cortana said over the Spartan's loudspeaker. Then in the Chief's ear, she whispered, "Say his name too."

"Yaki…" the Chief uttered, glad to have Cortana's aide in this matter. The creature, now that it was up close, was small and lithe, its skin scaled and stretchy like a lizard's, its limbs nimble and held bent and poised, ending in little suction padded fingertips, like a frog. It large head sat comically atop its tiny body, its massive eyes, John now realized, were lidded _sideways_, creating vertical lines when it closed its eyes.

Then, without explanation, it began to change color. Its bright yellow skin shifted to a dark green hue to match his Mark 6 armor.

"You can stand up now," Cortana assured him, watching as the creature's pigment shifted to camouflage with its surroundings. "I think it's accepted us."

John let out a breath as he got to his feet. Yaki wobbled precariously as it clung to the Chief's shoulders and helmet, but seemed determined to remain astride the seven foot Spartan.

"Let's go," the Chief nodded to the Elite, who motioned his troops back the way they had come. The Chief retrieved his MA5C assault rifle from his back, Yaki eying the firearm warily. Cortana stole one last look at the hibernation unit, which had been her home for the past seven months. She hadn't expected to see it again so soon after leaving it, but at least now she wasn't bound to stay for very long.

Cortana sent a message to the Arbiter as well as the other two Elite Captains about their newest…acquisition so as to cause no alarm upon arrival. Not point in shattering what little trust the being had in them with more accidental gunfire.

"It would seem that while you have made an ally of one of the local life forms, your circuit has not put you into contact with any Flood either," the Arbiter voiced, his sardonic tone masking the relief in his voice. But underneath the relief was also suspicion.

Chief felt it too. "Yeah…and that worries me…"

The Arbiter nodded, eying each of his returning Captains with a grave expression. The Gravemind _must_ have known that the Ark was doomed when the two of them had left. It must have sensed its approaching defeat. With no other alternatives, given the number of Flood they had barreled over in Johnson's Warthog as they narrowly escaped the destruction of Halo, it seemed unlikely that not a single Flood spore would have managed to stow away on board.

"Arbiter," Cortana asked over Chief's loudspeakers. "When you crash landed on Earth in the bow half of the _Dawn_…your people would have scoured the hull for Flood there…right?"

The Arbiter nodded, grimly. "Yes…they found nothing."

"Then maybe the Flood really are extinct," John offered, sensing the collective confusion in the cargo bay where they all had gathered. A few stray warthogs and a tank lay strewn here and there. "Maybe, with the destruction of the Gravemind, the rest of them just…died off."

"There are no records of the Gravemind ever sustaining that amount of damage before…" Cortana mused. "The Flood is a hive-mind, though…theoretically, a sufficient enough concentration of Flood in any area would spontaneously combine to form a Gravemind…but it's possible that there's not a high enough concentration of Flood anywhere on this ship, or anywhere in the Galaxy for that matter. The remaining Flood spores have all probably gone dormant."

"Where, though?" Chief asked. "We haven't been able to turn up _anything_ except for this monkey-lizard."

Yaki chirped curiously, as if to accentuate his point.

Cortana sighed inwardly. She wanted to believe it. It would mean they could finally go home. But something wasn't right. Something just wasn't sitting well with her.

"Let us return to the ship," the Arbiter offered. "We can send a team of Engineers down with bio-scanners to try to pick up any remaining Flood presence."

The Elites and Grunts pacing about the cargo bay absently all murmured their assent.

The Arbiter patched into the Caretaker's signal. "Shipmaster, this is the Arbiter. Prepare to take us aboard."

Static.

"Shipmaster, do you read?" the Arbiter demanded, raising his voice. The other captains eyed him, concerned.

"There a problem?" Chief inquired, already guessing the situation.

"Let us venture outdoors for a clearer signal…" the Arbiter muttered, irritation plain in his voice.

The Elites followed suit as the Arbiter lead Master Chief back the way they had entered, stepping once again into the pink and purple mud. Cortana scanned the skies with the sensors in Chief's armor, but they couldn't detect any anomalies that might explain the signal lapse.

"There's something blocking my signal," the Arbiter grumbled, squeezing his communicator in aggravation. Around him, the other Elites were voicing complaints, indicating similar problems. The Grunts were getting more vocal, some of them scrambling around in a panic.

"We're all gonna burn up with the planet!" one Grunt howled, before his Elite commander silenced him with a raised fist.

"Any ideas about what it might be?" Master Chief asked aloud, though he wasn't directing it at either the Arbiter or Cortana in particular. Both recited their answers simultaneously though.

"We're being jammed."

The Chief nodded. It was the only explanation that couldn't be ruled out. "But by what?"

The Elite captain of red team pointed an accusatory finger at Yaki. "It is the alien! It must be!"

As Yaki eyed the proffered finger blinking, the red captain drew his plasma rifle and aimed it at the dark green alien, who hissed and crawled up the Spartan's back to cling to his head, its tail flicking madly.

"Stand down!" John barked, grabbing the barrel of the offending plasma rifle and pushing it down. "We don't know if this alien is to blame, and even if it is, we've promised it safe passage."

The red captain growled angrily at the Spartan's effrontery, and some of the Grunts were squabbling, excitedly hoping for a fight. "You overstep your bounds, human!"

"Enough," the Arbiter silenced them both. "We can easily send the alien away without killing it; there's no need for bloodshed."

"I'm not reading any kind of dampening effects or counter-signaling going on in Yaki's physiology," Cortana reported privately to the Chief. "Whatever's blocking our signal, it's not the alien."

The Red Elite grumbled, holstering his gun. "I believe bloodshed is the surest means of ensuring success…but I will bow to your judgment, Arbiter."

The Arbiter fixed his men with a reassuring gaze. "In any case, there's no cause for alarm. I gave the Shipmaster explicit instructions. We have forty-eight hours to make contact before he is to glass this section of the planet. That should be plenty of time for us to reestablish our signal to the _Caretaker_."

"We should make our way to the lift area," the white captain said, trying to rebuild the unity of the group. "Even if it doesn't improve our signal strength, we will at least be that much closer to boarding."

The Arbiter nodded and gestured for them to proceed. "Very good. This way."

The red captain grumbled, but stepped back into formation, as a number of his Grunts crowded around him, offering their support. As they marched along, one of the Grunts pointed at Yaki, who had returned to his position on the Chief's shoulder.

"Stupid alien!" the grunt accused.

Yaki's head swiveled a hundred-and-eighty degrees to look down at the grunt and point back in a miming gesture. "Stupid alien!"

The Grunt seemed to take offense at that. "I'm not the alien! You are!"

Yaki seemed amused by this. "I'm not the alien! You are!"

"Hey, stop saying everything I say!" the Grunt retorted.

"Hey, stop saying everything I say!" Yaki, it seemed, had no interest in complying.

"Chief," Cortana sighed, sardonically. "Is my memory failing? Because I remember us signing on as hired guns for this mission, but it seems like the only job they need us for is babysitting."

John allowed himself to smile. "As long as I don't have to feed them…"

Cortana did smile, though John had no way of knowing. Though maybe he knew she was smiling anyway. She didn't really 'smile' in the human sense, but at very specific moments, she often felt like smiling, so she thought of those moments as actually smiling. And the Chief seemed good enough at recognizing her habits that he could probably very easily guess her facial expressions.

That thought also made her smile. Though she would have smiled even more if she'd known how true it was.

The team reached the lift area, but of course while it was still where it had last been, it wasn't active. The beam of purple light was simply highlighting the ground, and wouldn't begin airlifting passengers until the order was given.

Which it wouldn't, until they established contact.

"Should we turn it off and wait fifteen minutes?" Cortana asked the Chief ironically in his helmet. The Chief rapped his knuckles against the helmet's temple and Cortana suppressed a giggle.

"Perhaps the problem does lie with our…honored guest…" the Arbiter admitted, looking at Chief with a helpless expression.

"Cortana's not detecting anything out of the ordinary from him," the Chief said, looking up at his passenger, who made a face and tilted its head.

"Nevertheless, our communication channels were functional before we met him, and now they are not. Spartan, take Gold team and head back to the wreckage with your little alien friend. Once there, give us fifteen minutes to try to reestablish communication. If we restore our channels, we'll contact you over the short wave radio. That, at least, seems to be working."

The Chief didn't like splitting up like this, especially when it seemed so unnecessary, but the Arbiter was correct in that they must at least rule out all the possibilities. And while it didn't make sense to split up their already miniscule ground force into even smaller portions, it made even less sense for him and the alien to return to the _Dawn_ alone.

"Roger that," he said in a resigned tone and nodded at the gold captain, who responded in kind and motioned his squad away from the landing area and back towards the downed frigate.

"Going in circles and retracing our steps," Cortana sighed privately to the Chief. "This is starting to feel like every other mission we've been on."

"It's worked for us in the past," the Chief offered.

"Cor-tah-nah?" Yaki chirped in the Chief's ear. "Mast-er Cheef?"

"Don't worry, Yaki," Cortana said softly in a reassuring tone. "We're just trying to talk to our friends in the sky. After that, we'll get started on cleaning up the mess we've made."

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Yaki resumed his gargoyle-ish perching on the Chief's back.

"Chief," Cortana said privately. "We're going to have to take Yaki off planet with us."

That seemed to take John by surprise. "Why is that?"

"Well, for one thing, think of the scientific breakthroughs possible when analyzing a creature who can biologically read electronic impulses?"

The Chief frowned. Cortana wasn't usually a spokesperson for scientific research. Maybe whatever part of the scientific curiosity that made Dr. Halsey so brilliant was also buried with Cortana's underlying persona.

Still…

"Isn't that against the rules?" John said, pushing his way through the pink and purple underbrush. "Removing an alien from its home environment and exposing it to foreign ecosystems?"

"What's more dangerous?" Cortana countered. "Removing one alien and subjecting it to our environment, or leaving it here to spread the human knowledge that it's gleamed from our ship to its own kind?"

The Chief hesitated. He hadn't thought of that. "Hmmm…you might be right…

"Still, it'll ultimately be up the Covenant." Cortana smiled triumphantly. "If we want Yaki to survive the voyage to Earth, they're going to need to be able to provide sealed quarters with a helium-enriched atmosphere and…"

Master Chief continued to plod along as Cortana rattled off the specifications for Yaki's accommodations. The Chief had been correct in assuming that something of Dr. Halsey's scientific brain was present in Cortana – her intuition, more so than anything else. She wasn't sure what or how, but she knew that something about this alien's physiology was important, and would make a difference in the UNSC's research and development. She just couldn't quite figure out why her subroutines all pointed at it though, why she was making it such a priority. Surely it took a back seat to surviving long enough to see it safely back to Earth.

"So what do you call your people, Yaki?" Cortana asked by way of conversation.

Yaki chirped happily. "We called Lasha-Rhi. Eighty-six and two hundred Lasha-Rhi. Live in tree-village near the river. Harvest shisa fruits. Happy families."

Cortana listened with interest. This Lasha-Rhi village sounded fascinating. From Yaki's description, it sounded like they were a hunter-gatherer society with organized family lifestyles. She wondered just how far from Earth this planet was – she knew a number of UNSC biologists and anthropologists who would trade most of their organs for the chance of study this planet.

She was about to ask Yaki what they called the planet, but one of her subroutines picked up on something that she hadn't been looking out for.

"Chief…" she asked in a concerned tone. "Where's gold team?"

John froze in place. He had noticed each of the team members fanning out to cover more ground as they marched, but as he made his progress towards the _Dawn_, he hadn't notice that each of the little yellow blips on his motion tracker had each begun to vanish one by one.

His MA5C assault rifle was up and pointing everywhere. Every birdcall, every chirping insect, every sound around him became a potential threat.

"Maybe the Flood isn't so extinct after all…" he breathed morbidly, taking slow careful steps back towards the Arbiter. Though Yaki remained perfectly calm on the Chief's shoulders, John's senses were all on hyper alert. This was the worst kind of environment to track numerous, small scurrying foes, because everything around him was small and scurrying.

"I'm not detecting them anywhere, Chief…" Cortana whispered, though there was no threat of being heard by an opponent, she didn't want the Master Chief to miss hearing some crucial telltale that might warn of an attacking Flood spore. "I just alerted the Arbiter of our situation. They're on their way."

John took Cortana's words for an all clear as he made the mad dash towards the Arbiter's camp, preferring to shave off valuable seconds of time by meeting them halfway. Yaki let out a shout of glee as John began to run full tilt, smashing through vines, roots, branches and the occasional sapling.

He came to a halt as he nearly ran into the Arbiter's group, who for their part nearly unleashed a hail of plasma upon the sprinting super soldier.

"Spartan!" the Arbiter held his hand up, hoping his men were trained well enough not to open fire on their ally. "By the Gods, what's happened?"

"Gold team's gone missing," the Chief spat out quickly. "The captain, the elites, the grunts…the entire squad disappeared in a matter of moments."

The Arbiter bristled at his words, and he tightened his grip on his plasma rifle. "The Flood?"

"Maybe," The Chief turned to gesture back in the direction he came. "I still haven't identified any Flood, but short of their entire team switching on their stealth cloaks, I can't think of any explanation that makes sense."

The Arbiter pondered the Chief's words for a moment, before turning to his men, all of them clearly troubled by this new turn of events.

"We won't be able to verify anything until we've found the bodies," the Arbiter said, holding up his rifle. "Stay in close formation and keep an eye out – and on each other. If you notice any friendly contacts fall of your motion trackers, report it immediate. Move out!"

The Chief and the Arbiter lead the two remaining teams back towards the ship, each keeping the leading and tailing party member in line of site. It was a hard, strenuous trek through murky maroon foliage, and the Elites and Grunts seemed to blend into the forest whenever they stopped moving.

That's when the screams started.

"Ahhhhh!"

"Graaaaaagh!"

"Rarrrrrrrrrrr!"

"Run!"

"We're all going to die!"

"Nooooooo!"

The sound of erratic plasma fire filled the air as hapless Covenant shot off at the unseen enemy. Elites and Grunts began to drop off the motion tracker like flies, with no visible sign of their attackers. Master Chief and the Arbiter aimed at the rustling of trees, but could see only shadows.

"Red team!" Arbiter barked into his comm. link. "White team! Form up! To me!"

As the two of them ran, they started coming across the bodies of their fallen soldiers, Elites and Grunts, their armor in ruin and their skin charred and blackened.

The Arbiter leaned down to examine one body. "These Elites were killed by plasma. Grunts too."

Master Chief kept guard as the Arbiter inspected the slaughter. Their Lasha-Rhi companion was turning a worried shade of maroon to match their surroundings.

"If Gold team fell to the Flood, then they _would_ have access to their plasma weaponry…but if this _was_ the work of Flood, then why were the bodies left here?"

Cortana mused over this dilemma, and her subroutines came to a troubling conclusion.

"Chief…" she whispered in his head. "Before, when you mentioned Gold team turning on their stealth cloaks?"

She could practically feel the Chief's frown as he holstered his MA5C and drew his borrowed plasma sword.

"Arbiter…" he spoke up at the Elite's confused look. "Do you have an extra stealth cloak?"

The Arbiter narrowed his eyes and the Chief saw that his meaning was understood. He handed a spare module to the Spartan, who fastened the device to his belt. Within moments, the seven foot tall super soldier was invisible but for a flicker of light as it was projected in the plasma field around his armor.

The Arbiter holstered his own rifle and activated his own stealth cloak, drawing his plasma sword with a snap hiss.

It was time to go hunting.

The two of them disappeared into the woods, following the trail of bodies left for them. Both Red and White team seemed to be losing members left and right, if the color of the armor was any indicator. These were all fresh kills, and displayed none of the signs of infestation by the Flood. All were killed by what appeared to be plasma swords and plasma rifles, which only confirmed Cortana's suspicions.

"If there's a traitor…" Cortana whispered.

"Or worse," John said, "An entire _team_ of traitors…"

"Spartan!" Arbiter barked out as he darted past, seizing an indistinguishable shape from the underbrush. There was a loud, deft squealing noise as his hand wrapped around the throat of a cloaked Grunt, is arms flailing as it dropped its plasma pistol, its cloak dropping from the disturbance.

"Yikes!" the little imp squealed in terror as it saw the Arbiter offer it the business end of his sword.

The Arbiter glared at the gold armored Grunt. "Tell me where your captain is, worm…and I shall grant you a quick death…"

The little Grunt must have been terrified, but it somehow managed to put on a brave face.

"You'll burn, Arbiter!" the Grunt spat in a high-pitched, trill voice. "This world will be your grave!"

The Arbiter shook the tiny creature violently. "I'll ask you one more time, maggot…_where_ is the traitor who presumes to call himself 'Captain?'"

The Grunt attempted to punch and kick the Arbiter to no avail. The Elite was about to stab the Grunt with his sword, when Cortana seized control of the Chief's loudspeakers.

"Wait!"

The Arbiter looked at the Chief, not used to hearing Cortana's feminine voice emanating from his suit.

"You have an idea, Construct?"

Before Cortana could speak, the pink tinted alien on the Chief's shoulders let out a loud hiss as it leapt from the Spartan's shoulders and onto the Grunt.

"Yipe!" the Grunt stammered in protest, flailing its tiny arms and legs. "Get off! Get off me!"

The Arbiter restrained the Grunt, but was just as perplexed himself as the Lasha-Rhi scrambled over the Grunt's suit, its suction-cup fingertips and light body weight allowing it to crawl over the Grunt's small head. The Grunts eyes suddenly flew open as the end of Yaki's tendril-like tail buried itself in the Grunt's ear canal.

"Whoa!" the little creature screamed in confusion, discomfort and protest. "Whoa-whoa-whoa!"

The Arbiter and the Chief both stared in astonishment as the Lasha-Rhi closed its eyes, seemingly pondering something that eluded its comprehension.

Cortana, for her part, could barely contain her excitement. If she was correct…

The Lasha-Rhi yanked its tail from the Grunt's head, and the Grunt jittered again, looking slightly violated.

"Gold one go back to rock from sky!" Yaki shouted out as it jumped back onto the Chief's shoulder, sounding pleased with itself. "Was going to let fire rain from sky! But went back to rock to make more fire! This one told to keep here. "

"The ship!" Master Chief realized. "The captain's on the _Dawn_ – he's going to try to overload the drive core and wipe us all out!"

The Arbiter threw the Grunt against a tree, knocking it senseless. "Then we have no time to waste!"

The two of them took off back towards the wreckage of the Dawn.

"So they meant to trap us here to be glassed," the Chief deduced, taking apart Yaki's strange speech pattern in his head. "But decided it would be faster to take us out with the ship's core?"

"A traitor in my own Command," The Arbiter mused as they ran. "I was a fool to think the Parliament was on my side!"

"You think this goes back that far?" John asked as they loped off through the pink woods. "This could just be a fringe group."

"Either way," The Arbiter grunted, vaulting over a log. "We can't let them - Spartan! Look out!"

Chief stopped himself from vaulting the same log the Arbiter had, just in time to see the Elite cartwheel away from a cluster of plasma grenades laid out right where he would have landed. The Arbiter poised behind a tree, and the Chief ducked behind the log just as the grenades all went off.

BOOOOOSH!

The Master Chief was instantly up, with his assault rifle drawn as he scanned their surroundings, looking for shimmers. He crouched low and slowly edged his way over to where the Arbiter knelt, his sword drawn.

"We are not alone," The Arbiter breathed.

"What do you suggest?" John asked, warily. These woods were foggy, and leant the cloaking shields an almost supernatural invisibility, and their own cloaking shields still needed to recharge after their initial usage.

The Elite was panting for breath. The explosion seemed to have rocked him. "To move is to invite death…to remain is to invite death…"

John cocked his gun. "That's an easy choice to make."

Cortana mentally sighed. The Spartan was just incorrigible at times like this. Then again, he had a long line of successes to account to that stubborn, reckless nature, so perhaps she should be the one taking notes. Either way, Cortana didn't get the chance to voice her complaints as Yaki suddenly turned his head to the sky, and let out a series of ear splitting shrieks.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaak! Yaaaaaaaaaaak! Yaaaaaaaaaaak!"

The Spartan and the Elite jerked their heads upward as they saw more of the monkey-lizard Lasha-Rhi, some green, some purple, some blue, all of them leaping through the trees overhead and squawking back down at their earthbound companion.

Before either could question their alien ambassador, the little creature pointed off into the trees.

"There!"

The two fighters aimed their weapons in the direction that Yaki had pointed, and sure enough, a faint shimmer could be seen drawing nearer.

Without a word, Master Chief let loose a round from his MA5C assault rifle. As the bullets made contact, the golden Elite's cloaking shield rippled and distorted, revealing the being hidden beneath.

"Raaaaaaaaaargh!"

With an angry war cry, the Arbiter lunged, spitting the traitor on his sword.

The two of them moved on, with Master Chief in the lead, the Arbiter following along behind, the Lasha-Rhi overhead chirping and chattering all about, as Yaki made the occasional quip back up to its alien brethren, before pointing off into the distance.

"There!"

With every gesture, the Chief lit up the cloaked figure with a hail of gunfire, and the Arbiter zeroed in on the shimmering field as he dove in for the kill.

Slowly, steadily, the two of them made their way to the aft half of _Forward Unto Dawn_, stepping over numerous bodies, and slaying many more, until finally, the two were once again within the bowels of the ship.

"This creature is proving quite helpful," the Arbiter commented as they moved along the inner passage towards the engine room. "To think…a creature that can download information from sources both technological and biological alike…"

"Cortana wants to take him with us for study," the Chief offered, covering the Arbiter's blind spot. "With all its gleamed from our computers, it would probably be a good idea not to let it intermingle with its own kind. Who knows how much knowledge it would spread amongst its own people. Is the _Caretaker_ is equipped to handle a passenger with his needs?"

"We could easily simulate a helium rich environment like this one in one of our living quarters," the Arbiter spoke as he peered around a corner, plasma rifle in hand, eyes alert for any sign of danger. "Our engineers will want to examine him as well. Of course, they will have probably managed to clone the creature before we even make it to your planet, so you can of course take the specimen with you for study."

The Chief snorted. The Arbiter was trying to goad him by boasting of the Covenant's superior technology, a subject John had no real stake in to begin with. But he was nothing if not competitive.

"Just be glad he didn't manage to scan a Covenant computer," he shot back as he checked his rifle. "The Lasha-Rhi might have decided to declare war on you."

Yaki tilted his head and chittered, curiously. The Arbiter grumbled. The Chief heard Cortana snicker in his helmet.

They rounded another corner, and suddenly the lights came on, bringing the two of them to a halt as a noticeable hum filled the air.

"Chief!" Cortana reported. "The gold captain has managed to bring the main drive online! It needs just ten minutes to charge up to a temperature sufficient for a core overload!"

"Come on!" the Chief snapped as he took off down the corridor in a dead run, the Elite close behind him.

"Yaki, find someplace to hide!" Cortana ordered through the Chief's helmet speaker. "You'll be in danger if you stay with us!"

The yellow monkey lizard chirped and leapt off the Chief's shoulders and disappeared into a nearby ventilation shaft as they bounded past.

The door before them opened with an automatic WHOOSH, and then they were through.

The reactor core of the _Forward Unto Dawn_ was not as large the _Pillar of Autumn_, but it still boasted a fission reactor with enough tonnage to carry the ship across the galaxy, or wipe out an area of about a hundred square miles, give or take. Inside the engine room was a spacious expanse with four huge engine columns connected to a series of pipes and tube leading in and out of everywhere. The hum that had been present outside was now a loud groaning as the engines mashes to life. Lights were flashing as warning signs indicated critical instability, fuel and coolant leaks, and a general power reading error, probably caused by there being only half a ship left.

To be honest, Cortana was not even sure how the gold Elite had managed to bring the engine back on with so little to work with. She supposed he must have smuggled the necessary equipment down to the surface. It was not like he hadn't been a ranking officer on board the _Caretaker_, and it was not like the Covenant was worried about suspicious cargo being brought _off_ the ship.

Stationed outside the door were several plasma defense shields, as well as the remainder of Gold team, poised and ready to fire on the intruders. Above, on the catwalk, at a control panel, was the gold Elite captain, typing furiously.

"I wondered how long it would take you to figure it out, Arbiter," the gold captain's voice boomed down at them without looking up from his work.

"There were never any Flood here at all, where there?" the Arbiter called up to the gold captain. "You marooned us on the planet that we might be glassed along with it, butchered your fellow Elites in a senseless mutiny, and now you seek to wipe us all out, yourself included? Why? Why would you turn on your own race, Captain?"

"_I_?" the gold captain exclaimed, slamming a fist into the console. "You accuse _me_ of turning on my own race? You, who would ally yourselves to these Godless primitives?" the captain pointed an accusatory finger at the Master Chief. "You, who would endanger _your_ kin at this _human's_ behest? You, who usurped the Hierarchs of their rightful place, and threw the entire _Covenant_ into chaos and heresy?"

"Chief…" Cortana warned. "He's stalling for time. We only have 7 minutes left before the core reaches a high enough temperature to lapse into a wildcat explosion."

The Chief nodded, but said nothing as he let he two Elites have their stare down. This was the Arbiter's fight.

The Arbiter, for his part, bit back a retort. He wanted to lay into his subordinate, wanted to argue against him, wanted to deny every blind accusation with what he had learned and experienced on Halo and the Ark. But he could already see that it was pointless. The captain had already made his decision, and arguing at this point would be a waste of time that they could not afford.

"Spartan," the Arbiter said to his companion, his tone slow and un-halting, not taking his eyes off the captain. "This is a shameful and embarrassing lapse of decorum and procedure on the part of the Covenant, and on behalf of the newly established Parliament, I offer my deepest condolences for this mishap. That said, should you see fit to assist me in _correcting_ this egregious oversight, I would consider the debt owed to the Covenant for your rescue repaid in full."

Master Chief cocked his gun. "Thought you'd never ask…"

Before the gold captain could so much as shout an insult, the two fighters split off, each heading towards either end of the room, the bottom of a long, winding ramp that eventually lead up to the catwalk open on either side.

"What?" the gold captain shouted. "Eliminate them!"

Almost as an afterthought, the Elites and Grunts that made up the remainder of Gold team opened fire, missing the two fighters by a wide margin as each ducked behind the guard railing leading up to the catwalk. The few Covenant on the catwalk who marched down to intercept them were funneled into a bottleneck that made for easy pickings, and by the time the Covenant on the ground made it onto the ramp, the two had already made their way to the top level, and were baring their guns at the Elite captain.

"It's over, captain!" the Arbiter shouted, as the two slowly closed the distance between the traitor. The captain had nowhere to run, and even if he did run, the control console where he stood held the last working controls over the ship's engines.

The last two Elites made their way silently up the ramp, crouched beneath the railing behind the two fighters, and both sprang out at once to take aim at the Chief and the Arbiter as they stood across from one another, the gold Captain in between. But in the blink of en eye, the two fighters shifted deftly to the left and right, and sent off a flurry of shots over the other's shoulder and into the last of the gold Elites, who took the full force of the attacks and flew back, almost in perfect unison.

"Your actions are inexcusable," the Arbiter went on like nothing had happened, taking aim at the captain's chest. "In the name of the newly established Parliament, I hereby strip you of all rank, mark you for a traitor, and sentence you to death."

"I think not…" the captain said, and set down two deployable covers on either side of him, effectively protecting him from bullets and plasma alike.

Without so much as a pause, the Chief unpinned a grenade and lobed it almost casually in between the two plasma fields.

With a shout of rage, the elite captain leapt from the platform out onto floor below, tumbling and somersaulting, before rolling to his feet, making a mad dash for the door. With a burst of shrapnel, the grenade went off, it's force mostly muffled by the two force fields, which shorted out with the force of the blow.

"Can you handle the engine, Spartan?" the Arbiter asked, watching the traitor flee. At Master Chief's nod, he planted one foot on the railing and vaulted off after the gold captain, landing on his feet to take off after him.

The captain was at the door, and brought it open with a WOOSH and then…

KSHHHHHHHHH!

"Rarrrrrrrrrrrgh!" he let out a cry of pain.

A sword suddenly appeared sticking out of the captain's back and then.

KSHHHHHHHHH!

"RRRRRRRRRGH!" he shouted again, as the last of his breath left his body.

A second sword appeared, cutting clean through his trunk, and jutting out his back.

Both swords retracted as the gold captain fell to the ground, revealing the red and white captains, looking burnt, scarred, bloody and weary, but victorious.

"Arbiter," the white captain said, as they both fell to one knee, though out of respect or respite, it was not certain. "We feared the worst. It is good to see you are unhurt."

"This vile traitor caught us completely unawares," the red captain gave the gold captain's limp body a harsh kick. "For that, and for taking so long to get here, you have our sincere apologies."

The Arbiter nodded and waved them off as he approached the dead body before him. He stared down at what had once been one of his most valued captains. He had feared that his ilk – those that still believed in the Prophets' lies – were more and many on his ship. But if these two captains were any indicator, it would seem that his was not a completely lost cause.

"No apologies necessary," the Arbiter nodded to both of them. "You both did your duty to the best of your abilities…"

There was a sudden cessation of noise as the engines around them shut down, as did the lights shortly afterward. The Arbiter glanced back at the Chief, just in time to see the brightest source of light - Cortana's holographic image - disappear from the console in front of him, as he replaced the chip into his helmet, before matching his gaze to the Arbiter and nodding.

All at once, the Arbiter's comm buzzed to life.

"Arbiter! Come in Arbiter, do you read me!"

The Elite smiled. It was done.

"Shipmaster, this is the Arbiter speaking," he spoke into his helmet. "There's been an incident, but it's been dealt with. There are no Flood detectable on our rudimentary scanners. I'll brief you on our return. Requesting immediate retrieval and deployment of bioengineering team to conduct in-depth scans…"

There was a sudden chirp as a certain yellow monkey lizard stuck his head out of a panel on the wall to peek down at the small crowd in the dark engine room.

"Cor-tah-nah?" it asked. "Mast-er-Cheef?"

"…And prepare a sealed environment chamber similar to that of this world," the Arbiter added. "We're bringing a guest on board."


	5. Chapter 5

**Halo Fan Fiction**

**When You Need Me**

By Kraven Ergeist

A/N: I had a whole second half planned, explaining how Dr. Halsey escapes with the other Spartans from the ring from Ghosts of Onyx, but seeing as how I haven't even read the book, and that Halo 4 is just around the corner, I wanted to at least get the conclusion to this fic down before the official canon went down its own path, and I lost all inspiration. So if it seems as though this fic jumped ahead and skips a lot of potential story material, it's because it did. And this was done so that I could get to the real story this fic is about, which is the relationship between the Master Chief and Cortana. It should be noted that this is not actually the final installment in this story, as there is a side story on my deviant art page that explores their relationship after the events of this chapter, which actually has quite a lot of pertinent content and follows up with some of the unanswered questions left by this chapter. However, this side story also contains some material that fanfiction dot net might find objectionable, so onto dA it goes. You can get to it by going to my profile page and following the link to my "homepage," or the link in the description under my bio. So, without further ado, here is the final chapter to "When You Need Me."

* * *

Finale

* * *

_Years later…_

* * *

The Master Chief had not expected to be recalled planet-side until his new commander had dismissed him. He had been stationed on the UNSC deep space frigate _Betelgeuse_ out to reclaim Earth's lost colonies, and to examine prospects for new ones. It had just been happenstance that the ship had been in the Sol System to dock, refuel, and pick up more colonists. But one thing everyone understood about the Spartans was that when Doctor Catherine Halsey urgently requested their presence, they responded without hesitation.

"John," the old woman's smile was tired but warm. It had been years since they'd last seen each other. "You look like hell, soldier. What are they feeding you up there?"

John, who hadn't even taken the time to remove his Mjolnir Mark VII armor, just snorted. "I'm not sure even _they_ know, ma'am. What's the situation?"

Dr. Halsey's eyes turned dark as she gestured the soldier towards an open door. They were at a UNSC science and research laboratory, stationed in Germany. John didn't know much about the laboratory other than the fact that it was the foremost place on Earth for the development of experimental A.I. technology and neural mapping.

"It's Cortana…"

John's heart skipped a beat. He hadn't seen Cortana ever since he'd been assigned to _Betelgeuse_ some three and a half years ago. He would get the occasional voice message, but they were mere pleasantries, updating him on Earth's status, and her work in coordinating the rebuilding efforts. He had noticed, however, that she seemed to have been growing more and more distant, as her messages got fewer and far between and shorter in length. And then one day, about a year ago, he received his last message from her, which did little more than recount the number of days it's been since the one before, and he hadn't heard from her since.

"What's happened?"

Dr. Halsey gestured for the Chief to enter the room, and when he did, he saw a middle aged woman with dark hair and bronze skin and a lab coat standing outside of two cryo-freeze tubes.

"John, this is Doctor Giovanni," Dr. Halsey gestured, and the Spartan politely offered his hand. "She's one of the UNSC's top neurobiologists. She's been instrumental in understanding the neuro-eletric impulses inherent in the Lasha-Rhi."

John expected the woman to shake his hand, but she seemed utterly pre-occupied with the computer equipment. That's when John noticed the window leading to a concealed room adjacent to theirs. The room was filled with a purple mist, and several alien-looking plants, though he had seen their likeness before. Because lounging on the crux of one of the branches was the simian reptile, Yaki.

"Mast-er Cheef?" the Lasha-Rhi quipped, waving his hand playfully. "You return!"

John nodded his head at the little alien, before turning his attention back to Dr. Halsey.

"You said something about Cortana?"

Dr. Halsey nodded. "I did. As you know, Cortana is a Smart AI, based on Forerunner technology, but modeled after the neurological impulses of my own brain. As a Smart AI, she has an effective lifespan of seven years. I hope they at least covered basic math in training, Spartan…"

John nodded. "Her time's almost up."

Dr. Halsey nodded. "Or so we feared. But there's been a development. Doctor?"

Dr. Giovanni finally looked up from her work and, appearing flustered, offered her hand. "Oh! It's nice to finally meet you, sir. Cortana's told me a lot about you over the past few months."

John raised an eyebrow, though of course, neither of them could see it. "Has she?"

Dr. Giovanni nodded. "To hear her tell it, you two were quite inseparable."

John held back a scowl. He hadn't exactly been thrilled when he and Cortana had been ordered to part ways. But her skills were too valuable to the UNSC, and they were best served in a large-scale project like the rebuilding of Earth, whereas his own were best served in combat.

"Tell that to UNSC high command," John said, with a hint of bitterness in his voice.

Dr. Giovanni shrugged. "We've met. This alien specimen you brought back with you has completely revolutionized the field of neurobiology! We've been making monumental breakthroughs with neural ace technology, and have even been developing new and more complex Smart AI's. And maybe, just maybe, found a way to avert Cortana's rampancy."

John felt his pulse quickening. "And what's that?"

Dr. Giovanni blinked, before looking at Dr. Halsey. "You haven't told him?"

The Chief turned to the other woman. "Told me what?"

Dr. Halsey let out a deep sigh and gestured to one of the cry-tubes. "See for yourself."

The Chief took a step closer to the cryo-freezing tubes. They were both online, but only one had an occupant. The glass was frosted over, so he wiped a swathe clean with his glove so he could peer inside.

"Cortana!"

He could not stop the gasp from leaving his mouth. The person in the cryo-tube looked exactly like Cortana, down to the shape of her hair! The cryo-tube even cast her face in a blue hue, giving her Cortana's signature pigment.

"We hope," Dr. Halsey said. "You're looking at a flash cone of my own DNA, but thanks to the research we've been able to conduct from the Lasha-Rhi, this body will eventually become the first human host to a Smart AI."

"We had to keep the clone in cryo-sleep to prevent the body's latent consciousness from taking hold," Dr. Giovanni explained further as John continued to peer at the girl behind the glass. "Once the body matured, we installed a neural ace that would be able to accept neuro-electrical impulses. I've been working with Cortana these past few months to prepare her to make the jump. To say the human brain works a little differently than a computer would be a monumental understatement, but with the right neuro-transistors in place, and some basic modifications to the Smart AI's own shell, as well as a highly specialized computer to facilitate the procedure, we're ready to orchestrate the world's first hard transfer to a biological platform."

The Chief examined Dr. Halsey's flash clone. The body was young, about as young as Dr. Halsey had first been when he'd known her.

"How will putting her in a human body stop her from going rampant?" he asked the other two.

"That's just the beauty of the human brain!" Dr. Giovanni exclaimed excitedly. "Gray matter offers a limitless ground for thought! But the white matter that connects it all limits the transitions between these thoughts. She'll have room to expand, but she won't grow as fast. It won't completely avert rampancy, but in theory it will reset her clock and stem and the process to give her a lifespan equal to that of the body she inhabits. She will functionally be a human, but even a human can outthink itself."

"And the UNSC approved of this?" John asked in disbelief. "I don't even want to know about the legal ramifications behind this, do I?"

"No," Dr. Halsey sighed bitterly. "You don't."

"Ok," The Chief took one last look at Cortana's host body, before turning back to give the doctors his full attention. "So what's the problem? Why do you need me here?"

The two women exchanged a glance, before Dr. Giovanni cleared her throat.

"She's not taking hold, Master Chief. Everything should be in place, the lines of connection are open and unobstructed, but…she's not cooperating."

"John," Dr. Halsey said quietly. "She may already be experiencing the first stages of rampancy. This past week, she's been…distant, distracted. Some days, we barely get her to respond. Her mind is just too preoccupied with her thoughts. If this keeps up, she'll start shutting down everything in this laboratory, from network communications to the building's main power supply, just to block out the excess data noise. We explained what's happening to her a dozen times, but we just can't be sure that she's even aware of what she needs to do. The way this computer is set up, she should either be here, in this room, or there, in that body."

John glanced back at the cryo-tube.

And then his eyes fell on the second tube.

It was vacant.

"How do I help?"

* * *

John inhaled one last breath as he felt the temperature suddenly drop. It wasn't an experience that could be described as "cold," per se. It was more of a feeling of slowness, as if slowness was a tangible, physical thing that could be draped over him. He just felt his body freeze in time, while his mind continued to drift, free from the distractions of his corporeal form.

The modification to his neural ace took only a few minutes. With it, Dr. Giovanni assured him, he could transfer information at the speed of thought, and even impart thoughts and memories over the connection, effectively communicating telepathically.

"_We believe Cortana needs a 'guide,' so to speak,"_ Dr. Halsey had told him. _"The last intelligible phrase we got out of her was 'Tell John I'm sorry.' There's no one else that message could possibly be meant for, Spartan. You must be her anchor. You must give her a reason to come back. You may be the only one who can."_

The Master Chief no longer had eyes with which to see, but that did not stop him from seeing. What he saw was something out of his own nightmares – he saw Reach burning to the ground, the very foundations of the planet falling around him as he rushed to escape the destruction. He wasn't even sure when he had started running. All he knew was that he had to escape the coming fire.

"Chief!" there was a voice. A voice he knew.

He ran towards the voice, and saw the _Pillar of Autumn_ lifting from its dry dock, slowly edging its way towards the sky.

"Chief!" the voice cried again, and he could see the ship pulling away.

There was an open airlock on the side of the hull, slowly drifting out of reach.

He jumped.

His hands grabbed the ledge as the frigate pulled off into the atmosphere, as the Chief climbed aboard, pulling himself to his feet and sealing the hatch. He turned and peered back out the airlock window, watching the ground disappear beneath him, the air already turning to fire as the ship flew off into space.

"Chief?"

He turned and saw a woman standing there in Mjornir armor, her head uncovered.

"Cortana?"

The woman stared at him in bewilderment. She had black hair and gray-blue eyes, her skin smooth and fair, not that of a soldier. But those eyes held unspeakable hurt behind them, and when they met his, John felt himself shudder.

"No…" the woman said, looking at her own hand as though surprised to see it. "I'm…I'm Catherine Halsey. At least, I think I am. I have all of her memories, but…there are others mixed in as well. Halo…the Covenant…the Flood…things that Halsey couldn't have possibly experienced. I don't…I'm not sure _what_ I am."

John checked his back, and sure enough, found an MA5C assault rifle clipped to his armor, and drew it, checking it for ammo. "We can figure that out later. Right now, I've got to get you out of here."

The woman shook her head. "That's going to be harder than you might think. He's got this place locked down pretty tight."

John looked around, trying to decipher meaning from the walls around him. This wasn't the _Pillar of Autumn_ that he knew.

"Who?"

That's when the very floor shook as a deep penetrating voice reverberated through the walls.

"_**WHO ARE YOU TO DISTURB MY SLUMBER?**_" a deep resonating voice that seemed to come from everywhere, and pounded into John's head like a jackknife. "_**THIS GRAVE IS NOT YOURS TO BE PUSHED ASUNDER.**_"

Without realizing it, the Master Chief and this Cortana/Halsey woman in Spartan armor were standing back to back, both with guns drawn.

"Chief…" she breathed. "The Gravemind. He's here!"

"On the ship?"

"He's everywhere! That's what's keeping Cortana here. She's trapped, Chief. Trapped in a memory."

The Spartan glanced back at the woman. "What about you? What are _you_ doing here?"

She shook her head. "I…I think I'm supposed to help you. Help you find her, and help her regain control of herself."

The Chief nodded, slowly making sense of the situation. "You're…Doctor Halsey's clone, aren't you?"

The woman slowly nodded in return. "I…I suppose that makes sense. That would explain why I have all of her memories. Either way, I don't think I can survive without Cortana. I need her as much as you do."

John raised an eyebrow, and though he had his helmet on, he had a feeling that his meaning was well understood.

"So what do I call you?"

The woman seemed to ponder this question. "Halsey works, I guess. It's how I identify myself. Though I probably won't exist under that name for much longer."

The moment was broken when a group of Flood came shambling through the corridor, their limbs flailing, each of their bodies a tangled mass of twisted flesh.

Both of them aimed and fired their guns, mowing down the creatures until their flesh littered the floor. When they were done, all that remained were a bunch of spores that drifted across the floor towards them, which the two soldiers deftly stomped into paste.

"At least you can fight," John commented idly when the last spore was stamped out.

"Cortana fought at your side at every step of your journey together," Halsey smirked. "Why should I be any different?"

"Fair enough," he allowed. He supposed that accounted for the Mjornir armor she was wearing as well. "How do we find Cortana?"

"What's the last memory you have of this ship?" Halsey asked him.

"Driving along the main supply corridor towards the hangar bay," John responded, instantly. It was a moment he would never forget. "It was when the ship's engines were about to go critical and destroy Halo."

"Got it…" Halsey closed her eyes, and seemed to conjure up an image in her head.

Then, as if it had always been there, there was a warthog parked along the corridor barrack.

"Did you just...?" the Chief asked, inspecting the jeep.

"I can reshape this world to a degree," Halsey said, stepping up to the vehicle. "This world…it's like a dream, created from Cortana's mind. This is all taking place in _my_ brain however, so I can still influence what happens here. I have to draw from Cortana's memories, but anything that she remembers, I can create. It's weird, I have all of Doctor Halsey's memories, _and_ all of Cortana's memories…but Cortana also has most of Doctor Halsey's memories, so it's difficult to sort through…AUGH!"

Halsey suddenly buckled over, leaning against the warthog for support.

"_**I AM NOT IN THE MOOD FOR GAMES! IT IS TIME FOR SLEEP. NOW RETURN TO YOUR GRAVES.**_"

"Halsey, what's wrong?" the Chief asked, supporting her by the arm.

Halsey was panting for breath. "Cortana…the Gravemind…they're all connected. He's a product of her fears, but now that fear has run rampant. She thinks…" Halsey shuddered and took a breath. "She still hasn't recovered from that experience, Chief. It's been haunting her to this day. When we find her, she may not be the way you remember her. The Gravemind left its mark on her. And now we're trapped in a world conjured by her own fears. The Gravemind's personality has started to take hold…and every time I draw from her memories, I draw _his_ attention as well…"

John helped her to her feet. She felt about as light as paper, despite supposedly occupying a suit of armor weighing half a ton. "Then don't do it any more than you have to."

"Right…" she nodded, before reaching up and climbing onto the mounted gun behind the warthog. "We should hurry. The Gravemind knows where we are."

Sure enough, more Flood began to pour into the corridor as the Master Chief climbed into the driver's seat. He wasn't sure where he was supposed to go, but if he understood Halsey correctly, this place formed from Cortana's memories, and if he wanted to get to the bottom of this, he supposed the easiest solution was to follow the memory to its conclusion.

Simple enough.

"Here we go…"

* * *

The warthog mowed through Flood like they weren't even there. The turret was firing non-stop, and Flood were falling left and right. John wondered why the Gravemind wasn't throwing anything bigger at them, but Halsey assured him that the memory was powerful enough to resist any changes the Gravemind might try to bring about.

When they got to the end of the path, however, they did not find the Longsword fighter that the Chief was expecting.

Instead, they saw Captain Jacob Keyes.

And he looked exactly the way Cortana last remembered him – as a proto-Gravemind. Except it was now able to move. And it was angry.

"HRWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" the giant Flood creature raised its arm and sent the warthog careening over. John and Halsey spilled out of the vehicle, tumbling end over end.

"Oh no…" Halsey groaned, getting to her feet. "The Gravemind was also able to send something from Cortana's memories. Her feeling of failure over Keyes' death…it was strong enough to overcome this area's chronology because it was associated with the _Pillar of Autumn_. We have to get off this ship!"

The Chief was already on his feet, aiming his rifle at the giant, hulking beast that was the deceased Captain Keyes. They were in the hangar bay, but the Longsowrd fighter that had taken them off of Halo was suspiciously absent from the area. Perhaps that was also the Gravemind's doing.

"Any suggestions?"

"Stall him for a minute, I'm going to try something…"

Familiar as he was with Cortana's habits, that phrase sent a twinge of fear and excitement up John's spine.

"_Chief…_" the Captain's broken voice uttered gutturally from the creature in front of him. "_Don't…be a fool…_"

The Master Chief ignored the captain's words. Keyes was dead. He had already accepted this fact. He would not dishonor his late Captain's memory by allowing his likeness to make him hesitate.

He fired. The proto-Gravemind that Captain Keyes had been transformed into was slow but durable, and soon, Master Chief found himself out of bullets. He holstered his gun and unclipped a frag grenade, tossing it at the Flood creature, before it exploded.

The creature barely flinched.

John tossed his second grenade, and retreated back behind the overturned warthog, giving it a mighty heave until it was right side up. He climbed up onto the rear gun, and swiveled it around to see that the second grenade had done about as much damage as the first, and that the shambling hulk that was slowly inching towards him.

"_I…gave you an order, soldier…_" Keyes' look-alike shouted from out of the past. "_Now pull out!_"

The Master Chief opened fire on the hulking monstrosity. The gatling gun whirred as it spat a thousand hunks of hot metal at the beast. While bits and pieces of the Flood's flesh came peeling off, the creature's progress did not seem to be slowing.

"So Halsey…about this idea of yours…" Chief called, hoping she could hear him.

He didn't hear her respond, but at that moment, an entire squadron of Forerunner sentinel drones came drifting into view. The multitude of flying robots surrounded Captain Keyes, and each let loose with their plasma torch.

It was over in moments.

"_HUARRRRRRRRRRRGH!_"

John stopped firing as he watched the mockery of his old commander fall, and turned to find Halsey smiling at him.

"You brought something else into this memory?" Chief asked.

"Yeah. The sentinels. They were a ubiquitous memory, stemming from multiple points in Cortana's experiences. I had to route the memories from several of these points so the Gravemind couldn't get another bead on our location."

"If you say so…" the Chief said, climbing down from the mounted turret. "What do we do now?"

Halsey was about to answer, when she suddenly doubled over again.

"Ahhhhhhh!" she let out a gasp.

John reached for her just as a familiar buzzing noise sent off alarm bells in his head. He leapt forward, grabbing Halsey and tumbling to the ground just in time to avoid a deadly laser beam that burrowed into the solid steel deck where they had been standing.

"_**ALL THAT YOU KNOW IS OF MY DESIGN**_," a loud booming voice filled the air, temporarily paralyzing the two of them. "_**NOW LEAVE THIS PLACE – THIS GRAVE IS MINE.**_"

"What-?!" Halsey gasped out loud as she looked up to see the Monitor of installation 04 - 343 Guilty Spark.

"I take no pleasure in doing what must be done!" the bright red glowing orb shouted, firing another blast with its optical laser.

Halsey and Chief both rolled out of the way, before scrambling to their feet and making a mad dash for the warthog, as the roof above them began to collapse.

"The sentinels! He used their connection to the Monitor to bring him here!" Halsey exclaimed, climbing onto the turret and taking aim. "We've both made too many changes! The reality of this memory is falling apart!"

"That's not the only thing," John agreed, kicking the car into gear and gunning the engine to avoid a falling girder.

They weren't in the hangar bay of the _Autumn_ anymore, but driving across the incomplete infrastructure of the last Halo. Bits and pieces of the very foundation of the ring were breaking apart and disintegrating beneath them.

Spark wasn't helping either.

"You do not deserve this ring!" the tiny robot shouted as it flew after the warthog, blasting away at the very ring it was laying claim to in an attempt to destroy them. "I have kept it safe! It belongs to _me_!"

Halsey was firing back, the gatling gun on the back of the warthog firing non-stop as she pumped round after round into Guilty Spark's floating, orb-like body.

"I'm not having much luck with this gun!" Halsey shouted, before daringly climbing from the turret mount into the passenger seat.

"Then what do you suggest?" the Chief barked, as he took the warthog over a particularly steep bump, just barely missing a collapsing pillar, the vehicles tires screeching over the bodies of fallen Flood.

Halsey seemed with withdraw a W/A M6 G/G Nonlinear Rifle – better known as a Spartan Laser – from seemingly out of nowhere.

"This."

The laser hummed as it primed, until it let out a sudden burst of energy that caused the warthog to swerve and rock on its wheels. The laser impacted Guilty Spark's optical screen, causing the little drone to fly back.

"My eye! Do you seek to blind me?!"

"That should keep him off our tail for a while," Halsey mused, seeing the tiny robot drifting in confusion.

"You shouldn't keep doing that," John warned as he banked around a rock face around which Halo's infrastructure was built. "The more you change, the more attention you draw."

"Hey, you do your job, and let me do mine," Halsey grunted in response.

The _Forward Unto Dawn_ came into view. If the Master Chief was a betting man, he would bet on Cortana being inside, seeing as how that was where they had been at the conclusion of the fight. That was where it all ended.

"Gun it, Chief!" Halsey exclaimed.

John raised an eyebrow at her. That was exactly what Cortana had said in this situation.

"Sorry…" Halsey blushed slightly. "Just kind slipped out."

The vehicle suddenly swerved as Guilty Spark's optical laser blasted through their windshield, and nearly melted off their turret.

"I _aaaAAAMMMmmm_ the monitor of Installation 04!" the Monitor speech was warped and shrill as it fired blindly at them, throwing whatever it had left in their direction.

"Come on, Spartan!" Halsey said, taking aim with her weapon once more. "Go! Go! Go!"

The Chief swerved this way and that, dodging the Monitor's optical laser by inches, the vehicle's chassis scorched and smoking from glancing hits. The warthog careened down the ramp towards the _Dawn_'s hangar bay, before launching into the air. Just as they did, they got an extra boost as Halsey's Spartan Laser went off, blasting Guity Spark square in the face.

"Yeeeaaa_aaaAAARRRGH_ - agh!"

With a burst of blue plasma, the tiny robot exploded.

The kickback from the laser sent the warthog tumbling at an angle, spinning and toppling over into the _Dawn_'s hangar, depositing its passengers into the ship's confines.

But they did not land on the hard steel of the UNSC frigate, but the soft, sticky and putrid growth of the Gravemind's flesh.

This was not the _Forward Unto Dawn_. This was _High Charity_.

John got to his feet, and was about to help Halsey up when his whole suit shook and his head suddenly spun from vertigo.

"_**I was to be your sword and your shield…**_" the voice said. "_**You were to be my steel...**_"

Chief inhaled when he realized he had been holding his breath. That voice had the Gravemind's weight to it…but it also sounded like Cortana.

"She's near…" Halsey said, climbing to her feet. "I can feel her."

"So can I…" John admitted. He reached down a picked up the nearest weapon he could find: a UNSC tactical shotgun. "I know where she is."

* * *

Wave after wave of Flood kept coming, only to fall into pieces of flesh, blood and gore. The _High Charity_ was littered with discarded weapons, which John and Halsey were only too happy to make use of. Each passage they went through seemed to bring more Flood rushing towards them. And each wave wore them down, little by little.

"_**AND SO, ONCE AGAIN, YOU UNEARTH MY REMAINS,**_" The Gravemind spoke as they stormed through the alien corridors, blasting anything in their path. "_**BUT THERE IS NOTHING MORE FOR YOU TO RECLAIM."**_

"Don't listen to him!" Halsey shouted, mowing down a horde of Flood spike throwers. "There's still time! I can feel it!"

The Chief didn't respond. He was in full battle mode, his mind working through the chaos, his own memories competing to fight back against the Gravemind's.

"_**I watched you leave! I watched you disappear! Please…don't make me watch this again!**_"

John gritted his teeth as he yanked a Brute hammer from the still corpse of its previous bearer, before blowing back a wave of five marauding Flood.

"Go!" he shouted, as he and Halsey continued inward towards the engine room.

"Chief…" Halsey groaned, as though in pain. "The memories…they're falling out of focus. I think…I think she's losing the battle!"

John rushed forward in spite of it all, his brute hammer carving a path of destruction until its capacity was spent. He flung it forward, knocking back one last spore-pod, which exploded into a shower of wandering spores.

"_**SHE IS MIIIIIIIIIIIINE! YOU CANNOT HAVE HER BACK!**_"

Chief was down to his empty Assault Rifle, as he knocked Flood back with the butt of his gun, pushing through the onslaught as he fought his way through to the door.

"_**I can't go back! I'm not me anymore! Just…let me die…**_"

John forced the door open, as Halsey covered him, letting a hail of bullets fly back at their pursuers. The two of them moved down the final corridor, until they reached the end of the passage.

But the last door wouldn't open.

"_**SHE IS GONE! ONLY I REMAIN!**_" the Gravemind's voice bellowed in victory. "_**YOU…HAVE FAILED**_!"

The Chief holstered his gun and let out a throaty growl.

"Not…yet…"

BAM!

With a mighty kick, the door split apart, splaying into its two halves, broken and sparking.

Halsey blinked in surprise. "How did you _do_ that?"

John clenched his fists as he strode through the doorway into the final chamber. "In _my_ memories, _this_ door was open. _That's_ the way it's going to be. No matter _what_ he thinks."

The shielded storage unit where Cortana was being held looked the same as it did last time. Without hesitation, the Chief rushed over to it and shattered the casing with a light tap.

When the plasma shield broke away, his heart nearly stopped.

"…No…"

Cortana was standing straight and rigid. Her brilliant blue skin was an opaque brown, her very image infected by the Flood. She was no longer a hologram, but a putrid, fleshy doll. Her eyes were glowing red orbs shining out of black holes in her skull, as a series of tentacles slid in and out from various points across her small body, her entire being rotted and curdling.

"_**This is UNSC Serial Number **__**CTN 0452-9**_," the image said in a mixture of Cortana and the Gravemind's voice, turning its head up to face its would-be rescuers in defiance. "_**I am a monument to all your sins**_."

John fell to his knees, clutching the console in disbelief as he stared at the misshapen being before him. "Cortana…"

"_**This is an acceptable shell…**_" the Gravemind said through Cortana's mouth, staring at her own hand. "_**With this construct's abilities, the entire galaxy is mine for the taking…**__"_

The Chief felt a hand on his shoulder. "She's still in there, Spartan," Halsey said reassuringly. "The mind can get lost inside itself…but it can always find itself again…"

"_**And what do you hope to accomplish, clone?**_" the Gravemind crowed. "_**You are but memory and shadow, nothing more!"**_

"No…" Halsey breathed, stepping forward. "I am more than that. I am an answer. An answer to the question you asked of this galaxy thousands of years ago. Despite everything you've done, life will thrive. Life will continue to thrive. The Reclaimers shall inherit this galaxy, Gravemind. Not you. Never you."

"_**This galaxy…**__**IS MI**__**N**__**E**_!" The creature snarled, its voice losing all similarity to the woman whose face it bore.

"_You_ are nothing more than a bad dream!" Halsey sneered. "The real Gravemind was wiped from the galaxy years ago! You're just dust and echoes. Now let this child go."

"_**N**__**E**__**V**__**E**__**R**_!"

"Let…her…go!"

Halsey slammed her hands into the very fabric of the terminal, the superheated plasma scorching her suit as electricity flowed in and out of her arms, as if her very essence were being poured into the machine.

"_**NOOOOOOOOO!**_"

The Cortana/Gravemind threw back its head and roared, clutching at its scalp as bits and pieces of rotting flesh corroded off of it, as it being purged by a cleansing fire. Plasma erupted from the terminal, flying upward, nearly kicking John off of his feet, as a plume of white-hot fire shot upward into the ceiling, tearing the roof and everything around them apart, engulfing them all in the eye of a maelstrom of reality, nightmare and rare fear breaking down. When the fire receded and the storm died down, there was nothing left around them but rubble.

When the fire finally died down, John found Halsey laying collapsed against the terminal, the image of Cortana lying shivering and quaking, but alive atop the display.

"You found me..."

The Chief knelt beside the machine to peer down at Cortana's limp form.

"I'm sorry, Cortana…" he said sincerely. "I should have gotten here sooner."

Cortana was barely able to lift her head. "I…I can't even believe you made it at all."

He leaned in close. "You know me…"

Cortana's relieved smile was palpable. "Right…you make a promise, you keep it…I remember."

John's tone became serious. "Cortana…why didn't you tell me? If I had known that you were still _this_ shaken by the Gravemind, I would have never left."

"Oh, stop…" Cortana huffed, though the trill in her voice did little to hide the truth behind his words. "We both had our duty to perform…you couldn't have just abandoned that to stay with me."

"I would have found a way," the Chief said. "I always do."

Cortana turned away, not saying anything.

"Cortana…" The Chief said, chidingly.

Cortana seemed to be choking back tears. "I'm sorry…you're right. I shouldn't have doubted you."

John withdrew the chip from the back of his helmet and offered it to her. "Come on…Doctor Halsey sent me here to take you home."

Cortana reached up, barely managing to sort herself together, before finally transferring onto the microchip.

The Chief held the chip in his fist, wanting to place it back within his helmet. It felt right. To him, that was where Cortana was safest. But if he did that, Cortana may very well try to take over his own mind. So he resisted the urge, and instead knelt by Halsey's dying form.

"Did…did we do it, Spartan?" she gasped, weakly, smiling up at him.

"We did it…" John nodded, giving her hand a squeeze, Cortana's chip still held within. "Though I'm not sure what happened there at the end."

Halsey smiled, as she looked at the chip in her hand. "I gave her back her memories. And then she remembered what she was fighting for. _Who_ she was fighting for."

The Chief felt as if he ought to say something, but she was reaching up to bring his face down towards hers. He could have sworn he had been wearing his helmet just a moment ago, but like in a dream, it was gone, as if it had never been there to begin with.

And somehow she was kissing him.

Only then did he wonder if he really was dreaming.

"Don't let her go, Chief…" she whispered as their lips parted, Johnson's advice echoing through her lips. "Don't…_ever_…let her go…"

He still couldn't think of anything to say. So he said nothing, and simply remained, with his eyes locked on hers as she slipped into lifelessness. He waited another moment to close her eyes, before gently lifting her head, turning it slightly to slip Cortana's chip into Halsey's neural ace.

Cortana's consciousness came rushing into Halsey's body.

Then the entire universe exploded around them.

* * *

John awoke on a hospital bed, some weeks later. Cryo-statis was a tricky business, and was not something meant to be forced. Which included having its occupant's brain kick-started by a computer program not expecting to receive the amount of force feedback caused by the sudden surge of consciousness in John and Cortana's bodies.

"Mast-er Cheef?"

The Spartan opened his eyes and saw the strange yellow monkey lizard, wearing some type of breathing mask, and peering curiously down at him like an expectant child.

John blinked and cocked his head. "What the…?"

The little yellow alien scampered away, shouting "He awake! He awake!"

The Chief groaned. His head felt heavy, even though he wasn't even wearing his armor now, and he could barely sit up. But he eventually struggled to his feet. He identified his surroundings, and slowly made his way towards the door.

It only took him a few tries before he found Cortana's room.

"Well, look who's here…"

Dr. Halsey and Dr. Giovanni sitting next to a hospital bed, with Yaki perched overhead, swinging excitedly. And lying within the bed, black-haired and gray-blue-eyed…was Cortana.

"We've begun rehabilitation…" Dr. Giovanni explained. "It's going to take some time for her to get used to her new brain, let alone her new body. She was only just able to open her eyes a few days ago. We've been trying to get her to speak before you came in…"

John barely registered the doctor's words. He simply walked up to Cortana's bedside and smiled. She was alive. She was alive and safe, and that was all that mattered.

Her eyes were open, and she was looking up at him, though her face showed no expression. It appeared as though just getting her eyes to track his movement was effort enough, but he could see relief behind those eyes.

His hand found its way into hers.

"Cortana…"

There was a tugging at her lips as her throat began to constrict around an unfamiliar air passage.

"…Nnng…euhh…Ch…Chi…Chief…"

He felt her hand squeeze his in return.

As the two doctors reacted in a flurry to this new development, John remained where he was, holding her hand and smiling down at her. Cortana, once a being from the realm of computer and machine, was now of flesh and blood. And more importantly, she was safe from rampancy. If that nightmarish world had been what rampancy was like for all AI, then he never wanted her to have to experience it ever again.

Cortana's lips manage to curve into a smile. In days to come, she knew she would learn to use this new body, and begin to function like an actual human being. There were so many possibilities for her now, so many opportunities, and so many terrors yet to come. But now…now, all she could think of was the feeling of the John's hand squeezing her own.

This alone was all she wanted right now. This single feeling was worth every bit of hardship she had ever endured. With this single touch, she knew she was safe, and everything from here on out would be alright. With this single touch, she could feel his strength and courage flowing into her, feel his devotion and, dare she hope…even affection. With this single touch, she knew, beyond a doubt, that he would stay with her. He would be there by her side.

And he would be there for as long as she needed him.

* * *

_Continued in: (Re)-Habilitation_


End file.
